Foot and Meter

Foot

The literary device “foot” is a measuring unit in poetry, which is made up of stressed and unstressed syllables. 

The stressed syllable is generally indicated by a vertical line ( | ), whereas the unstressed syllable is represented by a cross ( X ). 

The combination of feet creates meter in poetry. Later, these meters are joined for the composition of a complete poem. Therefore, a foot is the formative unit of the meter.

In poetry, there are various types of foot, each of which sounds differently. Some of the basic types of foot are given below:

  • Iamb: Combination of unstressed and stressed syllable – (daDUM)
  • Trochee: Combination of stressed and unstressed syllables – (DUMda)
  • Spondee: Combination of two stressed syllables – (DUMDUM)
  • Anapest: Combination of two unstressed and a stressed syllable – (dadaDUM)
  • Dactyl: Combination of stressed and two unstressed syllables – (DUMdada)
  • Amphibrach: Combination of unstressed, stressed and unstressed syllable – (daDUMda)
  • Pyrrhic: Combination of two unstressed syllables – (dada)

Meter

Meter is a literary device that works as a structural element in poetry. Essentially, meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a line within a poem or poetic work

 Meter functions as a means of imposing a specific number of syllables and emphasis when it comes to a line of poetry that adds to its musicality. 

It consists of the number of syllables and the pattern of emphasis on those syllables. 

In addition, meter governs individual units within a line of poetry, called “feet.” A “foot” of a poetic work features a specific number of syllables and pattern of emphasis.

The repetition of metrical feet in a line of poetry creates poetic meter, like beats in music. The length of a poetic meter is labeled with Greek suffixes:
  • one foot = monometer
  • two feet = dimeter
  • three feet = trimeter
  • four feet = Iatetrameter
  • five feet = pentameter
  • six feet = hexameter
  • seven feet = heptameter
  • eight feet = octameter

Types of Metrical Feet

They are categorized by a specific combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. The most common examples of metrical feet include:

1. Iamb: unstressed syllable followed by stressed syllable, as in “describe”

An iamb is a literary device that can be defined as a foot containing unaccented and short syllables, followed by a long and accented syllable in a single line of a poem (unstressed/stressed syllables). 
Two of Robert Frost’s poems, Dust of Snow, and The Road Not Taken are considered two of the most popular examples of iamb.


Types of Iambic Meter

Iamb examples may be classified according to the following five types:

Key:

  • Non-bold = unstressed syllable
  • Bold = stressed syllable
  • Iambic dimeter (two iambs per line) (4 syllables)

    • The way a crow

      Shook down on me.... (Robert Frost, "Dust of Snow")

  • Iambic trimester (three iambs per line) ( 6 syllables)

    • We romped until the pans

      Slid from the kitchen shelf; (Theodore Roethke, "My Papa's Waltz")

      The only news I know

      Is bulletins all day (Emily Dickinson, "The Only News I Know")

  • Iambic tetrameter (four iambs per line) (8 syllables)

    • She walks in beauty, like the night

      Of cloudless climes and starry skies; (Lord Byron, "She Walks in Beauty")

  • Iambic pentameter (five iambs per line) ( 10 syllables)
      • To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. (Alfred Tennyson, "Ulysses")
      Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18)
  • Iambic hexameter (alexandrine; six iambs per line) (12 syllables)
      • Ye sacred Bards, that to ¦ your harps' melodious strings
      Sung th'ancient Heroes' deeds (the monuments of Kings) (Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion)
  • Iambic Heptameter (seven iambic per line) (14 syllables)
    • I s'pose the flats is pretty green up there in Ironbark. (A. B. Paterson, The Man from Ironbark)

2. Trochee: stressed syllable followed by unstressed syllable, as in “custom”

In poetic metre, a trochee (/ˈtroʊkiː/), choree (/ˈkɔːriː/), or choreus, is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one, in English, or a heavy syllable followed by a light one in Latin or Greek (also described as a long syllable followed by a short one). In this respect, a trochee is the reverse of an iamb.

The adjective form is trochaic. The English word trochee is itself trochaic since it is composed of the stressed syllable /ˈtroʊ/ followed by the unstressed syllable /kiː/.

Trochee comes from French trochée, adapted from Latin trochaeus, originally from the Greek τροχός (trokhós), "wheel", from the phrase trokhaios pous, literally "running foot"; it is connected with the word τρέχω trékhō, "I run". The less-often used word choree comes from χορός, khorós, "dance"; both convey the "rolling" rhythm of this metrical foot. The phrase was adapted into English in the late 16th century.

There was a well-established ancient tradition that trochaic rhythm is faster than iambic. When used in drama it is often associated with lively situations. One ancient commentator notes that it was named from the metaphor of people running (ἐκ μεταφορᾶς τῶν τρεχόντων) and the Roman metrician Marius Victorinus notes that it was named from its running and speed (dictus a cursu et celeritate). 


3. Spondee: equal stress for both syllables, as in “cupcake”

A spondee (Latin: spondeus) is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables in modern meters. The word comes from the Greek σπονδή, spondḗ, "libation".

The spondee typically does not provide the basis for a metrical line in poetry. Instead, spondees are found as irregular feet in meter based on another type of foot.

For example, the epics of Homer and Vergil are written in dactylic hexameter. This term suggests a line of six dactyls, but a spondee can be substituted in most positions. The first line of Virgil's Aeneid has the pattern dactyl-dactyl-spondee-spondee-dactyl-spondee:

Ārmă vĭrūmquĕ cănō, Troīaē quī prīmŭs ăb ōrīs

In classical meter spondees are easily identified because the distinction between long and short syllables is unambiguous. In English meter indisputable examples are harder to find because metrical feet are identified by stress, and stress is a matter of interpretation.

For example, the first part of this line from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (in iambic pentameter) would normally be interpreted as two spondees:

Crý, crý! Tróy búrns, or élse let Hélen gó.

4. Anapest: two unstressed syllables, followed by a stressed syllable, as in “understand”

An anapaest (/ˈænəpiːst, -pɛst/; also spelled anapæst or anapest, also called antidactylus) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. 

It may be seen as a reversed dactyl. This word comes from the Greek ἀνάπαιστος, anápaistos, literally "struck back" and in a poetic context "a dactyl reversed".

Because of its length and the fact that it ends with a stressed syllable and so allows for strong rhymes, anapaest can produce a very rolling verse, and allows for long lines with a great deal of internal complexity.

Apart from their independent role, anapaests are sometimes used as substitutions in iambic verse. In strict iambic pentameter, anapaests are rare, but they are found with some frequency in freer versions of the iambic line, such as the verse of Shakespeare's last plays, or the lyric poetry of the 19th century.

Since the word anapest consists of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, it is ironically a dactyl.

Trimeter

Here is an example from William Cowper's "Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk" (1782), composed in anapaestic trimeter:

I must finish my journey alone
Tetrameter

An example of anapaestic tetrameter is the "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement Clarke Moore (1823):

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house

The following is from Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib":

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Hexameter

An even more complex example comes from Yeats's The Wanderings of Oisin. He intersperses anapests and iambs, using six-foot lines (rather than four feet as above). Since the anapaest is already a long foot, this makes for very long lines.

Fled foam underneath us and 'round us, a wandering and milky smoke
As high as the saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide
And those that fled and that followed from the foam-pale distance broke.
The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces and sighed.

The mixture of anapaests and iambs in this manner is most characteristic of late-19th-century verse, particularly that of Algernon Charles Swinburne in poems such as The Triumph of Time and the choruses from Atalanta in Calydon. Swinburne also wrote several poems in more or less straight anapaests, with line-lengths varying from three feet ("Dolores") to eight feet ("March: An Ode").


5. Dactyl: stressed syllable, followed by two unstressed syllables, as in “bicycle”

A dactyl (/ˈdæktɪl/; Greek: δάκτυλος, dáktylos, “finger”) is a foot in poetic meter.  In quantitative verse, often used in Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight. 

The best-known use of dactylic verse is in the epics attributed to the Greek poet Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. 

In accentual verse, often used in English, a dactyl is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables—the opposite is the anapaest (two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable).


An example of dactylic meter is the first line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline, which is in dactylic hexameter:

This is the / forest prim- / eval. The / murmuring / pines and the / hemlocks,

The first five feet of the line are dactyls; the sixth a trochee.

Stephen Fry quotes Robert Browning's The Lost Leader as an example of the use of dactylic metre to great effect, creating verse with "great rhythmic dash and drive":

Just for a handful of silver he left us
Just for a riband to stick in his coat

The first three feet in both lines are dactyls.


Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking [a dactyl, followed by a trochee ('cradle'); then another dactyl followed by a trochee ('rocking')]Another example: the opening lines of Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" (1859), his poem about the birth of his poetic voice:

Out of the mockingbird's throat, the musical shuttle [2 dactyls, then a trochee ('throat, the'); then another dactyl, followed by a trochee]

The dactyl "out of the..." becomes a pulse that rides through the entire poem, often generating the beginning of each new line, even though the poem as a whole, as is typical for Whitman, is extremely varied and "free" in its use of metrical feet.

Dactyls are the metrical foot of Greek and Latin elegiac poetry, which followed a line of dactylic hexameter with dactylic pentameter.

In the opening chapter of James Joyce's novel Ulysses, a character quips that his name is "absurd": "Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls" (Mal-i-chi Mull-i-gan).


6. A pyrrhic (/ˈpɪrɪk/; Greek: πυρρίχιος pyrrichios, from πυρρίχη pyrrichē) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. It consists of two unaccented, short syllables. It is also known as a dibrach.