3 responses to “Metrical Feet”
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“In more sophisticated poetry, regular metre is a subtle and flexible device, organically integrated into the total poem through its sensitive interaction with the natural rhythms of speech and the meaning of words.” In the Vedic prosody, these are the universal creative movements and the worlds are created and move in their rhythms. It is in them that one can hear the Pythagorean music of the spheres.
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Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are …
— each line has three trochees followed by monosyllabic iamb.
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Metric variations
Poems with a well-defined overall metric pattern often have a few lines that violate that pattern. A common variation is the inversion of a foot, which turns an iamb (“da-DUM”) into a trochee (“DUM-da”). A second variation is a headless verse, which lacks the first syllable of the first foot. A third variation is catalexis, where the end of a line is shortened by a foot, or two or part thereof – an example of this is at the end of each verse in Keats’ La Belle Dame sans Merci:
And on thy cheeks a fading rose (4 feet)
Fast withereth too (2 feet)
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The Winds of Wonder 
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