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This is a test-yourself quiz; the results will be available only to you. In the following selections, identify the predominant meter.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“ ’Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this and nothing more.”
--Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven" |
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Dactylic hexameter |
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Trochaic octameter |
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Iambic heptameter |
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Anapestic pentameter |
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| 2 |
That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
--William Shakespeare |
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Trochaic tetrameter |
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Iambic pentameter |
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Dactylic tetrameter |
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Anapestic trimeter |
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| 3 |
I would be wandering in distant fields
Where man, and bird, and beast, lives leisurely,
And the old earth is kind, and ever yields
Her goodly gifts to all her children free.
--Claude McKay, "In Bondage" |
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Iambic pentameter |
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Trochaic pentameter |
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Anapestic tetrameter |
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Dactylic |
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| 4 |
Higgledy-piggledy
Juliet Capulet
Cherished the tenderest
Thoughts of a rose.
"What's in a name?" said she,
Etymologically,
"Save that all Montagues
Stink in God's nose."
--Anthony Hecht, "Nominalism" (p. 818) |
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Iambic pentameter |
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Trochaic trimeter |
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Anapestic dimeter |
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Dactylic dimeter |
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| 5 |
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Eagle" (p. 813) |
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Iambic pentameter. |
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Trochaic trimeter |
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Iambic trimeter |
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Iambic tetrameter |
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| 6 |
Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality
--Emily Dickinson, "Because I could not stop for Death" (p. 1005) |
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Iambic pentameter |
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Iambic tetrameter (predominantly) |
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Trochaic tetrameter |
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Anapestic trimeter |
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| 7 |
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
Though what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from my heels up to my head,
And he jumps in bed before me when I jump into my bed.
--Robert Louis Stevenson, from _A Child's Garden of Verses_
(What other childhood verses can you recall?) |
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Anapestic tetrameter |
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Trochaic tetrameter |
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Iambic heptameter or septenary |
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Dactylic pentameter |
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| 8 |
The world is too much with us, late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers,
Little we see in nature that is ours,
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon.
--William Wordsworth, "The World is Too Much With Us" |
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Trochaic pentameter |
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Iambic pentameter |
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Anapestic tetrameter |
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Dactylic hexameter |
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| 9 |
Sir, I admit your general rule
That every poet is a fool:
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.
--Alexander Pope, "Epigram from the French" (p. 745) |
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Trochaic tetrameter |
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Iambic tetrameter |
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Anapestic tetrameter |
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Dactylic dimeter |
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| 10 |
'Tis not alone my inky cloak good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these might seem,
For they are actions that a man might play,
But I have that within which passes show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
--William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_ |
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Anapestic tetrameter |
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Dactylic hexameter |
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Trochaic pentameter |
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Iambic pentameter |
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