Encyclopedia > Anapaest

  Article Content

Anapaest

An anapaest is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. It consists of two short syllables followed by a long[?] one. It may be seen as a reversed dactyl.

Here is an example from Cowper[?], a line with three anapaestic feet:

I am out of humanity?s reach

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, galloping feelin verse, and allows for long lines with a great deal of internal complexity. The following is from Byron:

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.

An even more complex example comes from W. B. Yeats. 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.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
242

... - 3rd century - 4th century Decades: 190s 200s 210s 220s 230s - 240s - 250s 260s 270s 280s 290s Years: 237 238 239 240 241 - 242 - 243 244 245 246 ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 27.6 ms