Elegiac couplets consist of alternating lines of dactylic hexameter and pentameter: two dactyls followed by a long syllable, a caesura, then two more dactyls followed by a long syllable. Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. ... In poetry, a pentameter is a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet: Be what you can if thus your heart so deem, For more the man will less the foible seem. ... A dactyl (Gr. ... A long syllable is one that is emphasized, or stressed. ... This article may be confusing for some readers, and should be edited to enhance clarity. ...
Note that - is a long syllable, u a short syllable, and U either one long or two shorts:
- U | - U | - U | - U | - u u | - - - U | - U | - || - u u | - u u | -
Example:
In the Hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column, In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.
Elegiac refers either to those compositions that are like elegies or to a specific poetic meter used in Classical elegies.
Because the hexameter line is in the same meter as epic poetry, and because the elegiac form was always considered lower style than epic, elegists frequently wrote with epic in mind and positioned themselves in relation to epic.
Afterward, Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued that the elegiac is the form "most natural to the reflective mind," and it may be upon any subject, so long as it reflects on the poet himself.
Feeds |
Contact