A Foot to Spondee and crossing over to Trochee

The Spondee

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.

Being edited will be right back soon




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.

The Foot of Iamb

In Table above notice how the symbols for “long and short vowels” in disyllable of the Quantitative Meter equate with the “stressed and unstressed disyllable of Accentual-Syllabic forms in Qualitative meter with respect to the Iamb, the most common metrical foot in English and other languages as well.

The Iamb is called a rising meter because its sound rises from unstressed sound to a stressed sound. The four verses in Stanza 50 of Lord Tennyson’s poem "In Memoriam" provide examples of iambs used in English poetry.

In Memoriam
Stanza 50

1 Be near me when my light is low,
2 When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
3 And tingle; and the heart is sick,
4 And all the wheels of Being slow.

And show the results from the four verses scanned as follows:

The scansion of these four verses has provided some basic clues as to the structure and form of the verses in the poem. Verses 1 and 3 of stanza 50 make use of the iamb and other foot types but still measures four feet each in Non-Standard Iambic Tetrameter verse. Verse 2 has no iambs but still measures four feet; without any iambs present it cannot be called an Iambic Tetrameter verse, but simply a Tetrameter Verse. Verse 4 is made up entirely of iambs and measures four iambic feet and is rightly called a Standard Iambic Tetrameter verse. The iamb is clearly recognized for its monotonous rhythmic tone (da-dum, da-dum, da-dum); probably the reason why Lord Tennyson mixed iambs with other foot types like the spondee, pyrrhic to shake up the rhythmic flow.

A Standard iambic verse regardless of the length of the foot is a verse containing all its feet made up of iambs.

A Non-standard iambic verse regardless of the length of the foot has the iambs mixed with other foot types for example the, trochee, spondee, dactyl, anapest and pyrrhic. This structure counteracts the metronomic effect by substituting for an iamb another type of foot whose stress is different. The first foot in the verse is the one most likely to change. The second foot is almost always an iamb. This is where the “inversion technique” is used. This technique allows iambic tetrameter verses (and other types of iambic feet, example iambic pentameter) to retain their dominance in spite of being invaded by other foot types. The inversion technique imposes strict compliance in that there must be no compromising on the required length of feet; so an iambic tetrameter must measure four feet, the iambic pentameter must measure five feet, iambic hexameter must measure six feet and so on. Most inversions tend to fall on the trochee.

In the poetic world, no one goes around saying Non-standard and Standard Iambic Tetrameter as the case may be; so long as the verses measure four feet the qualifier is not needed, just simply Iambic Tetrameter, Iambic Pentameter, whatever the case may be is the acceptable term used in poetry analysis.

Attention must be drawn to the fact that in addition to having poems written in classical Hexameter, over centuries English poems have shifted from classical Hexameter to Iambic Hexameter. An example of this shifting is seen in poems written by Michael Drayton and other eminent poets through the ages. Drayton used iambic hexameter couplets way back in 1612 in his “Poly-Olbion”. Here is an example from his works:

Classical English poets have experienced great difficulty in writing poems with Dactylic Hexameter verses. The position taken on this is that English leaves vowels and consonants out from words, thus becoming a problem because the Hexameter relies on phonetics, and sounds always have fixed positions. Several attempts were made in the 18th century to adapt Dactylic Hexameter into English Iambic Pentameter. An example of this is found “Couplets on Wit” by Alexander Pope where he used Heroic Couplets (a pair of rhyming verses written in iambic pentameter) an example is shown in Stanza VI taken from the poem where he use quite effectively iambs in the creation of Iambic Pentameter verses in heroic couplets; and disregarded the use of the Dactylic Hexameter. The Dactylic Hexameter has never been popularly used in English, where the standard meter is iambic pentameter. Take a look:

Couplets on Wit (Stanza VI)

Wou’d you your writings to some Palates fit
Purged all you verses from the sin of wit
For authors now are conceited grown
They praise no works but what are like their own

Have you noticed that in verse 3 of the exampler that the last foot is incomplete, that is, there is a syllable missing? In poetry this is exceptable. What the poet has done is to shift the feeling of the poem, a technique so often used to achieve a certain effect.  So in addition to this verse being an iambic pentameter, it is also a catalectic verse in iambic pentameter. A safe definition for this type of verse probably would go like this: A catalectic verse is a metrically incomplete verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot.

Heroic Couplet

A pair of rhyming verses written in Iambic Pentameter is termed a Heroic couplet. It was so called for its use in the composition of epic poetry in the 17th and 18th centuries. The couplet is formed with the use of two successive verses of poetry with equal length and rhythmic correspondence with end words that rhyme.

Geoffrey Chaucer created the “heroic couplet” easily recognized in his “Canterbury Tales”. A couplet for special purposes, is the shortest stanza form, but is frequently joined with other couplets to form a poem with stanzas of four verses with each verse having ten-syllables. So it is easy to figure out why the “heroic couplet” bears such names as the decasyllabic quatrain also known as the “heroic stanza”, or “heroic quatrain”. Thus, the decasyllabic quatrain consists of four verses with a rhyme scheme of aabb or abab.

Note however, that “heroic couplets are also formed with no stanza divisions, as in Roberts Browning’s “My Last Duchess”. See excerpt of poem scanned below:

Comments on Hurricane Preparedness Watch

This didactic poem “Hurricane Preparedness Watch” is made up of decasyllabic quatrains rhyming aabb. This is a term used for a poetic form in which each stanza consists of four lines of ten syllables each, usually with a rhyme schemes aabb. When the decasyllabic quatrain has a rhyme scheme abab, it is often referred to as the "heroic quatrain", "heroic stanza" or the "four-line stave". It came to prominence in the poem Nosce Te ipsum (know thyself) by Sir John Davies in 1599. The history of English Literature shows that the most common usage for the decasyllabic form had existed long before Davies's poems in the form of the heroic couplet, where two lines of iambic pentameter verses were composed with a rhyme scheme aabb.

Before writing came into general use, instruction was conveniently expressed in verse, as being more easily remembered than prose. The Greeks did not recognize didactic poetry as a separate literary genre; since it was written in hexameters they regarded it as a form of epic poetry. In Greece this kind of composition died out in the fifth century BC with the rise of prose literature, but was revived in the Hellenistic age. Didactic Poetry is intended to convey instruction and information in a "fun sort of way" while at the same time putting across a delicate or serious message. It can assume the mode and features of imaginative works by infusing knowledge in a variety of poetic forms where various poetic techniques, diction and style are infused to keep readers' interest from start to finish. There is the popular view that allegory, aphorisms, apologues, fables, gnomes and proverbs are specific types of Didactic Poetry because of their close affinity. When reading didactic poems, focus on the serious messages each conveys. However, bear in mind that every poem has a didactic thread either overly or covertly.