In Table below notice how the “long vowels” of the Quantitative Meter equate with the “stressed syllables of Accentual-Syllabic forms in Qualitative meter with respect to the Spondee. The Spondee still measures a foot even though it has one sound that is stressed.
In Verses 1, 2, and 3 of stanza 50 taken from the poem “In Memoriam”, by Alfred Lord Tennyson are examples of the use of the Spondee as shown below:
The Trochee
In the Table below notice how the “long and short vowels” of the Quantitative Meter equate with the “stressed and unstressed syllables of Accentual-Syllabic forms in Qualitative meter with respect to the Trochee.
Trochee is called a falling meter because its sound falls from stressed to unstressed. In Verses 1, 2, 3 and 4 of stanza 50 of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” show how the trochee is used or not used with other metrical foot types. Take a look:
Have you noticed that in quatrain 50 Verse 2 of “In Memoriam” only has a trochee and is not used anywhere else in the quatrain rhyming abba. As you read the verses aloud do you not feel that this verse has dramatically shifted the tempo away from the tempo established in the other three verses in the quatrain? Well that is what happens when the poet decides not to use verses made up entirely of iambs but pepper the iambs with other foot types. Also, Verse 2 is a Tetrameter Verse while the other three verses are Iambic Tetrameters. There are no iambs in Verse 2 but still measures four feet; hence the reason why it is simply called a Tetrameter Verse.
A quatrain is a stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four verses with a defined rhyme scheme. The significance of the quatrain lies in the fact that it can easily be memorized because it contains only four verses.
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