The following passage from L’Allegro (ll. 11–16) may serve as a specimen:
But cóme thou Góddess fáir and frée,
In héaven yclépt Euphrósyné,
Ánd by mén héart-easing Mírth,
Whom lóvely Vénus, át a bírth,
Wíth two síster Gráces móre,
To ívy-crównëd Bácchus bóre, &c.
The structure of the verse is essentially iambic, though the iambic metre frequently, by suppression of the initial theses, as in the thirteenth and fifteenth lines of this passage, falls into a trochaic cadence. Pure trochaic verses, i.e. those that begin with an accented syllable and end with an unaccented one, occur in these two poems, in couplets, only once, L’Allegro (ll. 69–70):
Stráight mine éye hath cáught new pléasures,
Whíles the lándscape róund it méasures.