An anapaest 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 (as in a-na-paest); in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. It may be seen as a reversed dactyl. In verse, a foot is the basic unit of meter used to describe rhythm. ... Poetry (from Ancient Greek: (poiéo/poió) = I create) is traditionally a written art form (although there is also an ancient and modern poetry which relies mainly upon oral or pictorial representations) in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional... The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. ... A long syllable is one that is emphasized, or stressed. ... A dactyl (Gr. ...

Here is an example from Cowper, a line with three anapaestic feet: Portrait of William Cowper attributed to Romney. ... This article is about a foot as a unit of length. ...

I am out of humanity's reach

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. The following is from Byron's The Destruction of Sennacherib: Lord Byron, Anglo-Scottish poet George Gordon (Noel) Byron, 6th Baron Byron (January 22, 1788–April 19, 1824) was an Anglo-Scottish poet and leading figure in Romanticism. ... The Destruction of Sennacherib is a poem by Lord Byron first published in 1815. ...

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

An even more complex example comes from Yeats (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. W.B. Yeats in Dublin on 24 January 1908. ... An iamb is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. ...

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 immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces and sighed.

The mixture of anapaests and iambs in this manner is most characteristic of late 19th century verse, particularly that of 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, and innumerable other examples. Swinburne may be A. C. Swinburne the poet Swinburne University of Technnology in Melbourne, Australia Swinburne, Free State in South Africa This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... A limerick is a short, often humorous and ribald poem developed to a very specific structure. ... A self-portrait of Lewis Caroll, taken with assistance. ... Lewis Carrolls The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in 8 Fits) is a comic poem about a group of adventurers hunting a legendary beast. ... Edward Lear, 1812-1888 Eagle Owl, Edward Lear, 1837 Another Edward Lear owl, in his more familiar style Edward Lear (12 May 1812 - 29 January 1888) was an artist, illustrator and writer known for his nonsensical poetry and his limericks, a form which he popularised. ... T.S. Eliot (by E.O. Hoppe, 1919) Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was an American-born poet, dramatist, and literary critic, whose works, such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, and Four Quartets, are considered defining achievements of twentieth...

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.-1...