Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashion'd so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!
Hood, Bridge of Sighs.
is plainly dactylic.
But very few poems conform exactly to the metrical pattern. For example, Blake's
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
seems clearly to be trochaic; yet the last trochee of each line lacks its unstressed element, and the fourth line has an extra-metrical syllable, Could. By itself the fourth line would be called iambic: in this context it is called trochaic with 'anacrusis,' i. e., with one or more extra-metrical syllables at the beginning.[34] Or again in Clough's stanza,
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!
'Say Not, the Struggle Naught Availeth.'
the movement is clearly iambic, yet the first and third lines have an extra-metrical syllable at the end. This is called 'feminine ending.'
Moreover, sometimes the word or phrase rhythm clashes with the metrical rhythm and makes the resultant seem doubtful. Thus
Of hand, of foot, of lips, of eye, of brow.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 106.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance.
Tennyson, The Brook.