Anapestic tetrameter

Anapestic tetrameter is a poetic meter that has four anapestic metrical feet per line. Each foot has two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. It is sometimes referred to as a "reverse dactyl", and shares the rapid, driving pace of the dactyl.

Anapestic tetrameter is a rhythm for comic verse, and prominent examples include Clement Clarke Moore's published, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and the majority of Dr. Seuss books. When used in comic form, anapestic tetrameter is often highly regular, as the regularity emphasizes the breezy, melodic feel of the meter, though the initial unstressed beat of a line may often be omitted.

The verse form is not solely comic. Lord Byron's epic Don Juan contains much anapestic tetrameter. Eminem's hit song "The Way I Am" uses the meter for all parts of the song except the chorus. In non-comic works, it is likely that anapestic tetrameter will be used in a less regular manner, with caesuras and other meters breaking up the driving regularity of the beat such as in the case of Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee. Anapestic tetrameter is generally used in the Parode (entrance ode) of Classical Greek Tragedy. An example of the form is Robert Browning's “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix”:

An anapestic foot is two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. We could write the rhythm like this:

A line of anapestic tetrameter is four of these in a row:

We can scan this with a 'x' mark representing an unstressed syllable and a '/' mark representing a stressed syllable. In this notation a line of anapestic tetrameter would look like this:

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