Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism

by F. V. N. Painter

is made up of four iambic feet, and is therefore an iambic tetrameter. Iambic pentameter, in which Milton's "Paradise Lost," much of Pope's poetry, Shakespeare's dramas, and, indeed, a large proportion of English verse, are written, is called heroic measure.

In like manner we have trochaic monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter. The following line,

"As unto the bow the cord is,"

is trochaic tetrameter, which is the meter of "Hiawatha."

The foregoing are called dissyllabic meters; but the trisyllabic measures have the same names according to the number of feet. A verse consisting of a single dactyl is thus dactylic monometer; of two dactyls, dactylic dimeter; and so on up to dactylic hexameter, which is the meter of Homer's "Iliad," Vergil's "Æneid," and Longfellow's "Evangeline" and "Courtship of Miles Standish." The line,

"Softly the breezes descend in the valley,"

is dactylic tetrameter, though the last foot is a trochee.

In like manner we have anapestic lines of all lengths from monometer to hexameter. The line,

"How she smiled, and I could not but love,"

contains three anapests, and is therefore anapestic trimeter.