Furthermore, in a passage like the following, which everyone recognizes as exquisitely musical, it is not obvious whether the rhythm is iambic or anapestic or trochaic.
It will be observed that the fundamental rhythm of both iambic and trochaic verse is the same, as is also that of both anapestic and dactylic verse; the distinction belonging only to the metre as measured into regular lines.
The omission of one of the two light syllables from the foot in trisyllabic verse is so common as to make it difficult to find pure anapestic or dactylic verse in English.
Often it seems to an English reader to have an anapestic effect, and to be best described as anapestic tetrameter.
Lewis regards the measure as purely syllabic, with no regard for alternation of accents, and instances the earlier lines of the passage as being quite as nearly anapestic as iambic.
The breathlessly continuous character of such long anapestic or dactylic lines may of course be interrupted, by way of relief, by the substitution of iambi or trochees.
These specimens, as is usual in anapestic verse, show considerable freedom in the treatment of the part of the foot containing the light syllables, substituted iambi being very common.
The six-stress anapestic line which Tennyson preferred for his later dramatic monologues like "Rizpah" is really a ballad measure, and is seen as such to its best advantage in "The Revenge.
This is likewise iambic pentameter; but in the second line a clumsy anapestic foot is inserted to correspond to the nature of the monster described.
In noble anapestic lines he pours forth the thought as it comes to him: "'Behold, I could love if I durst!
Technically the poem is anapestic tetrameter much varied by the introduction of iambic feet.
Anapestic feet are used freely to improve the music; in fact, they are nearly as numerous as the iambic feet.
This not only denies the existence of Anapestic Monometer, but improperly takes for the Anapestic verse what is, by the statement itself, half Iambic, and therefore of the Composite Order.
What syllables have stress in a pureanapestic line?
Such syllables are redundant in iambic and anapestic verses; in lines of any other sort, they are generally, if not always, included in the measure.
The first foot of an anapestic line, may be an iambus.
Dactylic with single rhyme is the same as anapestic would be without its initial short syllables.
Anapestic lines of four feet and of three are sometimes alternated in a stanza, as in the following instance:-- Example IV.
The anapestic measures are few; because their feet are long, and no poet has chosen to set a great many in a line.
The Line of a single Anapest preceded by an Iambus," or what he improperly calls "The first and shortest species of Anapestic lines.
Again we find, especially in dactyllic and anapestic lines, a trochee or spondee thrown in to vary the movement.
A line of spondees is rarely found in our English because a succession of accented syllables is almost impossible with us and the amphimacer and amphibrach are seldom more than secondary feet in a dactyllic oranapestic line.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "anapestic" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
