anapest

While Longley's verse structure is loose, lines 1 and 3, both in the first stanza, consist of an anapest followed by an iamb, while line 4 reverses this at the beginning of the second stanza with a'trochee followed by an anapest.

He loosened his iambic pentameter by allowing himself an anapest or two, sometimes even three, in each line, but rarely a trochee (one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed) or dactyl (one stressed, two unstressed) except for the occasional traditional trochaic substitution at the start of a line.

The anapest, the "march rhythm" (Laban 181) was considered appropriate for more settled dances.

About a particular rhythm in the same piece, Morris writes, "Imagine an anapest in which the weak beats also feel something like spondees (thus, short/short/long)" (p.

Because of the unstressed syllable at the end of the line, the concluding foot is neither anapest (unstressed-unstressed-stressed) nor dactylic (stressed-unstressed-unstressed).

The attraction of it is Byron's display of mastery of versifying that it displays: the perfect handling of the anapest (the "running" meter).

Although it seems to accelerate the measure, the anapest, a variation on this patterning but in triple--or tripe, fitting Addison's mold--time, still requires a systematic oscillation between stresses.

Each of the three eleven-syllable lines has the following meter: unstressed syllable, stressed syllable, unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed (or three iambs, one anapest, one iamb).