Anapest



An anapaest (also spelled anapæst or anapest, also called antidactylus) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. It may be seen as a reversed dactyl. This word comes from the Greek ανάπαιστος, anápaistos, literally "struck back" (a dactyl reversed), from 'ana-' + '-paistos', verbal of παίειν, paíein: to strike.

Because of its length and the fact that it ends with a stressed syllable and so allows for strong rhymes, anapaest can produce a very rolling, galloping feeling verse, and allows for long lines with a great deal of internal complexity.

Examples
Here is an example from William Cowper's "Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk" (1782), composed in anapaestic trimeter:
 * Trimeter


 * I must fin ish my journ ey a lone 

An example of anapaestic tetrameter is the anonymously published A Visit From St. Nicholas:
 * Tetrameter


 * Twas the night before Christ mas and all through the house 

The following is from Byron's The Destruction of Sennacherib:


 * The As syr ian came down like a wolf on the fold 
 * And his co horts were gleam ing in purp le and gold 
 * And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea 
 * When the blue wave rolls night ly on deep Gali lee .

An even more complex example comes from Yeats's The Wanderings of Oisin. He intersperses anapests and iambs, using six-foot lines (rather than four feet as above). Since the anapaest is already a long foot, this makes for very long lines.
 * Hexameter


 * Fled foam underneath us and 'round us, a wandering and milky smoke
 * As high as the saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide
 * And those that fled and that followed from the foam-pale distance broke.
 * The im mor tal de sire of im mor tals we saw in their fac es and sighed .

The mixture of anapaests and iambs in this manner is most characteristic of late-19th-century verse, particularly that of Algernon Charles Swinburne in poems such as The Triumph of Time and the choruses from Atalanta in Calydon. Swinburne also wrote several poems in more or less straight anapaests, with line-lengths varying from three feet ("Dolores") to eight feet ("March: An Ode"). However, the anapaest's most common role in English verse is as a comic metre, the foot of the limerick, of Lewis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark, Edward Lear's nonsense poems, T. S. Eliot's Book of Practical Cats, a number of Dr. Seuss stories, and innumerable other examples.

Apart from their independent role, anapaests are sometimes used as substitutions in iambic verse. In strict iambic pentameter, anapaests are rare, but they are found with some frequency in freer versions of the iambic line, such as the verse of Shakespeare's last plays, or the lyric poetry of the 19th century.

References: Shakespeare Biography (BOOK)