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. Look up poetry in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Meter (British English spelling: metre) describes the linguistic sound patterns of a verse. ... An anapaest is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ... In verse, many meters use a foot as the basic unit in their description of the underlying rhythm of a poem. ... Dactyl may mean: A dactyl, a creature in Greek mythology. ...

Anapestic tetrameter is a traditional rhythm for comic verse, and prominent examples include Clement Clarke Moore's 'Twas the night before Christmas, Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, and much of Dr. Seuss' poetry. When used in comic form, Anapestic tetrameter is often highly regular, which emphasizes the breezy, melodic tone of the meter, though the initial unstressed beat of a line may often be omitted. Clement Clarke Moore, (July 15, 1779 – July 10, 1863), is best known as the credited author of A Visit From St. ... Cover of a 1912 edition of the poem. ... Lewis Carroll. ... Lewis Carrolls The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in 8 Fits) is a nonsense poem about a group of adventurers hunting a legendary beast. ... Postage stamp honoring Dr. Seuss and depicting him along with several of his creations, such as The Cat in the Hat and (courtesy of the United States Postal Service) Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991), better known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss, was a famous American...

However, the verse form is not solely comic, and Lord Byron's epic Don Juan, for example, contains much anapestic tetrameter. Lord Byron, English poet Lord Byron (1803), as painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, (January 22, 1788 – April 19, 1824) was the most widely read English language poet of his day. ... Don Juan is a long narrative poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan. ...

Example

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 notate this with a 'x' mark representing an unstressed syllable and a '/' mark representing a stressed syllable^[1]. In this notation a line of iambic pentameter would look like this:

The following lines from Dr. Seuss' classic Yertle the Turtle are examples, showing both a complete line of anapestic tetrameter and a line with the first beat omitted: Postage stamp honoring Dr. Seuss and depicting him along with several of his creations, such as The Cat in the Hat and (courtesy of the United States Postal Service) Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991), better known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss, was a famous American... Yertle the Turtle is a book written by famous childrens author Dr. Seuss. ...

We can notate the scansion of this as follows: In literature, meter or metre (sometimes known as prosody) is a term used in the scansion (analysis into metrical patterns) of poetry, usually indicated by the kind of feet and the number of them. ...

And today the great Yertle, that Marvelous he,