Trochaic octameter is a poetic meter with eight trochaic metrical feet per line. Each foot has one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Trochaic octameter is a rarely used meter.
The best known work in trochaic octameter is Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", which uses five lines of trochaic octameter followed by a "short" half line (in reality, 7 beats). By the end of the poem, the latter half line takes on the qualities of a refrain.[ citation needed ]
Another well-known work is Banjo Paterson's "Clancy of the Overflow", which uses four lines of trochaic octameter for each verse throughout. Other examples are Robert Browning's A Toccata of Galuppi's , [1] Alfred Tennyson's Locksley Hall , [2] and Rudyard Kipling's Mandalay . [3] Lines in these poems are catalectic (' x ' x ' x ' x ' x ' x ' x ' ).
DUM | da |
A line of trochaic octameter is eight of these in a row:[ citation needed ]
DUM | da | DUM | da | DUM | da | DUM | da | DUM | da | DUM | da | DUM | da | DUM | da |
We can scan this with a 'x' mark representing an unstressed syllable and a '/' mark representing a stressed syllable. In this notation a line of trochaic octameter would look like this:
/ | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x |
The following first verse from "The Raven" shows the use of trochaic octameter. Note the heavy use of dactyls in the second and fifth line, which help to emphasize the more regular lines, and the use of strong accents to end the second, fourth and fifth lines, reinforcing the rhyme:
We can notate the scansion of this as follows:
/ | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x |
Once | up- | on | a | mid- | night | drear- | y, | while | I | pon- | dered | weak | and | wear- | y |
/ | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | |
O- | ver | many | a | quaint | and | cur- | ious | vol- | ume | of | for- | got- | ten | lore, | |
/ | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x |
While | I | nod- | ded, | near- | ly | nap- | ping, | sud- | den | ly | there | came | a | tap- | ping, |
/ | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | |
As | of | some- | one | gent- | ly | rap- | ping, | rap- | ping | at | my | cham- | ber | door. | |
/ | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | |
"'Tis | some | vis- | i- | tor," | I | mut- | tered, | "tap- | ping | at | my | cham- | ber | door; | |
/ | x | / | x | / | x | / | |||||||||
On- | ly | this, | and | noth- | ing | more |
Trochaic octameter is popular in Polish [4] and Czech literatures. [5] It is because the main stress in Polish falls regularly on the penultimate syllable and in Czech on the first syllable. So all Polish and Czech two-syllable words are trochaic. [6]
In poetry, a hendecasyllable is a line of eleven syllables. The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical poetry, and the newer of which are syllabic or accentual-syllabic and used in medieval and modern poetry.
In poetry, metre or meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody.
Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person.
An iamb or iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable. This terminology was adopted in the description of accentual-syllabic verse in English, where it refers to a foot comprising an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Thus a Latin word like íbī, because of its short-long rhythm, is considered by Latin scholars to be an iamb, but because it has a stress on the first syllable, in modern linguistics it is considered to be a trochee.
In poetic metre, a trochee is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one, in qualitative meter, as found in English, and in modern linguistics; or in quantitative meter, as found in Latin and Ancient Greek, a heavy syllable followed by a light one. In this respect, a trochee is the reverse of an iamb. Thus the Latin word íbī "there", because of its short-long rhythm, in Latin metrical studies is considered to be an iamb, but since it is stressed on the first syllable, in modern linguistics it is considered to be a trochee.
The Sapphic stanza, named after Sappho, is an Aeolic verse form of four lines. Originally composed in quantitative verse and unrhymed, since the Middle Ages imitations of the form typically feature rhyme and accentual prosody. It is "the longest lived of the Classical lyric strophes in the West".
Syllabic verse is a poetic form having a fixed or constrained number of syllables per line, while stress, quantity, or tone play a distinctly secondary role — or no role at all — in the verse structure. It is common in languages that are syllable-timed, such as French or Finnish — as opposed to stress-timed languages such as English, in which accentual verse and accentual-syllabic verse are more common.
Accentual verse has a fixed number of stresses per line regardless of the number of syllables that are present. It is common in languages that are stress-timed, such as English, as opposed to syllabic verse which is common in syllable-timed languages, such as French.
Old Norse poetry encompasses a range of verse forms written in the Old Norse language, during the period from the 8th century to as late as the far end of the 13th century. Old Norse poetry is associated with the area now referred to as Scandinavia. Much Old Norse poetry was originally preserved in oral culture, but the Old Norse language ceased to be spoken and later writing tended to be confined to history rather than for new poetic creation, which is normal for an extinct language. Modern knowledge of Old Norse poetry is preserved by what was written down. Most of the Old Norse poetry that survives was composed or committed to writing in Iceland, after refined techniques for writing were introduced—seemingly contemporaneously with the introduction of Christianity: thus, the general topic area of Old Norse poetry may be referred to as Old Icelandic poetry in literature.
Iambic pentameter is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in each line. Rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called "feet". "Iambic" indicates that the type of foot used is the iamb, which in English is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. "Pentameter" indicates that each line has five "feet".
In English poetry, trochaic tetrameter is a meter featuring lines composed of four trochaic feet. The etymology of trochaic derives from the Greek trokhaios, from the verb trecho, meaning I run. In modern English poetry, a trochee is a foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Thus a tetrameter contains four trochees or eight syllables.
This is a glossary of poetry terms.
"Locksley Hall" is a poem written by Alfred Tennyson in 1835 and published in his 1842 collection of Poems. It narrates the emotions of a rejected suitor upon coming to his childhood home, an apparently fictional Locksley Hall, though in fact Tennyson was a guest of the Arundel family in their stately home named Loxley Hall, in Staffordshire, where he spent much of his time writing whilst on his visits.
Anapestic tetrameter is a poetic meter that has four anapestic metrical feet per line. Each foot has two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. It is sometimes referred to as a "reverse dactyl", and shares the rapid, driving pace of the dactyl.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to poetry:
Resolution is the metrical phenomenon in poetry of replacing a normally long syllable in the meter with two short syllables. It is often found in iambic and trochaic meters, and also in anapestic, dochmiac and sometimes in cretic, bacchiac, and ionic meters. In iambic and trochaic meters, either the first or the second half of the metrical foot can be resolved, or sometimes both.
Greek and Latin metre is an overall term used for the various rhythms in which Greek and Latin poems were composed. The individual rhythmical patterns used in Greek and Latin poetry are also known as "metres".
A masculine ending and feminine ending or weak ending are terms used in prosody, the study of verse form. "masculine ending" refers to a line ending in a stressed syllable. "feminine ending" is its opposite, describing a line ending in a stressless syllable. This definition is applicable in most cases; see below, however, for a more refined characterization.
Old English metre is the conventional name given to the poetic metre in which English language poetry was composed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The best-known example of poetry composed in this verse form is Beowulf, but the vast majority of Old English poetry belongs to the same tradition. The most salient feature of Old English poetry is its heavy use of alliteration.
Ferskeytt is an Icelandic stanzaic poetic form. It is a kind of quatrain, and probably first attested in fourteenth-century rímur such as Ólafs ríma Haraldssonar. It remains one of the dominant metrical forms in Icelandic versifying to this day.