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Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of a rhythm, iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form | x – u – |, consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. There usually is a break in the centre of the line, thus the whole line is:
In poetry, a tetrameter is a line of four metrical feet. However, the particular foot can vary, as follows: Anapestic tetrameter: "And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea" (Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Sennacherib") "Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house" ("A Visit from St. Nicholas")
Mostly these consist of either a dactylic hexameter or an iambic trimeter, followed by an "epode", which is a shorter line either iambic or dactylic in character, or a mixture of these. The first or second line can also end with an ithyphallic colon (– ᴗ – ᴗ – x). [9] For examples of such epodic strophes see: Archilochian; Alcmanian
Related to iambic heptameter is the more common ballad verse (also called common metre), in which a line of iambic tetrameter is succeeded by a line of iambic trimeter, usually in quatrain form. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a classic example of this form. The reverse of an iamb is called a trochee.
Occasionally, as an alternative to iambic, Greek playwrights use trochaic feet, as in the trochaic tetrameter catalectic. According to Aristotle (Poet. 1449a21) this was the original meter used in satyr plays. In the extant plays, it is more often used in comedy, although occasionally also in tragedy (e.g. Aeschylus' Agamemnon 1649-73).
Furthermore, the lines are usually rhymed. When the lines are in iambic pentameter, they are referred to as heroic verse. However, Samuel Butler also used closed couplets in his iambic tetrameter Hudibrastic verse. [1] "True wit is nature to advantage dressed What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd"
In that case it is called iambic septenarius ('septenarius' means grouped in sevens). Used outside the theatre, it is called iambic tetrameter catalectic (catalectic means that the meter is incomplete). Iambic septenarii are often associated with women in Roman comedy, as in the following line from Plautus's Miles Gloriosus:
S.M., or SM— Short metre, 6.6.8.6; iambic lines in the first, second, and fourth are in trimeter, and the third in tetrameter, which rhymes in the second and fourth lines and sometimes in the first and third. "Blest Be the Tie that Binds" is an example of a hymn in short metre.