Poetic Scansion

Foot and Line Length

Poetic Scansion
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Metrical Feet: Lessons for a Boy
Trochee trips from long to short.
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long;With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests
throng.

Poetic Scansion
Scansion

Scansion is a process by which

one analyzes the stressed and
unstressed syllables in feet and
lines of poetry.

Poetic Scansion
Scansion Metric Feet

Iamb: unstressed stressed

Trochee: stressed unstressed
Anapest: unstressed, unstressed
stressed
Dactyl: stressed unstressed,
unstressed
Spondee: stressed, stressed

Poetic Scansion
Scansion Metric Feet and their sounds

Iamb: da, DA = awake

Trochee: DA, da = wakeful
Anapest: da, da, DA = in a dream
Dactyl: DA, da, da = sleepily
Spondee: DA, DA = dream house

Poetic Scansion
Scansion Line Length

Trimeter: a line with three metrical feet

Tetrameter: a line with four metrical
feet
Pentameter: a line with five metrical
feet
Hexameter: a line with six metrical feet

Poetic Scansion
The Beatles
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

PICture your SELF in a BOAT on a

River with
TANgerine TREE-eees and MARmalade
SKIiies
Dactyl = Stressed, Unstressed,
Unstressed