Laurel · Poems by form and metre

Dactylic hexameter

Six dactyls to the line, a stress then two light syllables: the line of Homer and Virgil, attempted in English by Longfellow in Evangeline and by Clough. Below, what the metre is and how to recognise it, then every poem on Laurel measured as dactylic hexameter, with how closely each keeps it.

What dactylic hexameter is

Six beats to the line, each a heavy syllable and then two light ones: DUM-da-da six times, with the last foot cut to two syllables. The line of Homer and Virgil, which English poets have tried to imitate with stress in place of the Latin long and short.

DUM-da-da DUM-da-da DUM-da-da DUM-da-da DUM-da-da DUM-da-da

THIS is the FOR-est pri-ME-val. the MUR-mur-ing PINES and the HEM-locks
Longfellow, Evangeline; the beats in capitals

How to tell

Very long lines, sixteen or seventeen syllables, beginning on a heavy syllable, with a falling waltz rhythm and a two-syllable ending. In a translation from Greek or Latin, remember that the metre is the translator’s.

Paste a poem of your own and Laurel will say whether it is in dactylic hexameter, stanza by stanza. How to scan a line.

4 poems on Laurel in dactylic hexameter

  1. P.S. by Mary Trevellyn Arthur Hugh Clough, Amours de Voyage · 79%
  2. Claude to Eustace,—from Rome Arthur Hugh Clough, Amours de Voyage · 78%
  3. Canto II Arthur Hugh Clough, Amours de Voyage · 76%
  4. Vision Joyce Kilmer, Trees and Other Poems · 82%

Each poem's metre was measured from its own words by the method described here; the figure beside a poem is the share of its stressed syllables that fall on the beat. Forms are named from the rhyme scheme and line count together.