Dactylic tetrameter

Dactylic tetrameter is a metre in poetry.^[1] It refers to a line consisting of four dactylic feet. "Tetrameter" simply means four poetic feet. Each foot has a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, the opposite of an anapest, sometimes called antidactylus to reflect this fact.

Metrical feet and accents

Disyllables
◡ ◡	pyrrhic, dibrach
◡ –	iamb
– ◡	trochee, choree
– –	spondee
Trisyllables
◡ ◡ ◡	tribrach
– ◡ ◡	dactyl
◡ – ◡	amphibrach
◡ ◡ –	anapaest, antidactylus
◡ – –	bacchius
– ◡ –	cretic, amphimacer
– – ◡	antibacchius
– – –	molossus
See main article for tetrasyllables.
v t e

Example

A dactylic foot is one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones:

DUM

da

da

A dactylic tetrameter would therefore be:

DUM

da

da

DUM

da

da

DUM

da

da

DUM

da

da

Scanning this using an "x" to represent an unstressed syllable and a "/" to represent a stressed syllable would make a dactylic tetrameter like the following:

/

x

x

/

x

x

/

x

x

/

x

x

The following lines from The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" demonstrate this, the scansion being:

/	x	x	/	x	x	/	x	x	/	x	x
Pic-	ture	your-	self	in	a	boat	on	a	riv-	er	with

/	x	x	/	x	x	/	x	x	/	x	x
tan-	ger-	ine	tree-	ees	and	marm-	a-	lade	skii-	ii-	es

Another example, from Browning:

/	x	x	/	x	x	/	x	x	/	x
Just	for	a	hand-	ful	of	sil-	ver	he	left	us!

Another example from Leonard Cohen of his song "Famous Blue Raincoat":

/	x	x	/	x	x	/	x	x	/	x
What	can	I	tell	you	my	bro-	ther	my	kee-	per

/	x	x	/	x	x	/
What	can	I	poss-	ib-	ly	say

See also

• Dactyl (poetry)
• Tetrameter
• Alcmanian verse, for the dactylic tetrameter in Greek and Latin poetry