To break a line such as this down into units, we will need another kind of foot. Happily, there is one.

Two new feet.

• A spondee is a foot consisting of two stressed syllables. Unlike the other four feet, spondee is almost never the basis for a meter (e.g., spondaic pentameter). It occurs less frequently than the major four, usually in places where the poet wants suddenly strong emphasis or a heavy, slowing effect. Rhythm is not always tied to meaning, but spondees very frequently are. Hence,

   /    /    u      /       u    /       u   /      /     /
  Bare ru- | ined choirs | where once | the late | birds sang.
  

  Notice that the first four lines of this sonnet are one sentence, ending in this line. The rhyme scheme also suggests a major division between lines 4 and 5. The poet describes himself growing old, and it is appropriate that here, at the end of his first paragraph (as it were), the rhythm grows slow. Metrically speaking, the line is still five feet long. And most of the feet (three out of five) are iambic, so this would be iambic pentameter.




• A pyrrhic is a foot consisting of two unstressed syllables. Like the spondee, it is rare and almost never used as the dominant meter in a line. Instead, it provides a contrast to the feet around it. Unlike a spondee, however, which amplifies the meaning of its syllables, a pyrrhic tends to pull its syllables into the background, thus allowing the emphasis to fall on what comes before or after them. Look at the way the pyrrhic and spondee work together to support Dryden's meaning in "To the Memory of Mr. Oldham":

  O early ripe! to thy abundant store
  What could advancing age have added more?
  It might (what nature never gives the young)
  Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue.
  But satire needs not those, and wit will shine
  Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.
  
  
   u   /     u     /      u    /       u   /     u     /
  But sat- | ire needs | not those, | and wit | will shine
  
      u    u     /     /     u    u    u  /      u   /
  Through the | harsh ca- | dence of | a rug- | ged line.
  

Rules of thumb. With all six feet (iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, spondee, pyrrhic) at your disposal, you are ready to scan any poem written in regular meter. Here are two rules of thumb to help you:

• Majority rules. Discern which foot is most common in a line, and consider the context of other lines if you need to. The irregular line from "To the Memory of Mr. Oldham" (immediately above) contains one spondee, two pyrrhics, and two iambs. This hodgepodge of feet does not lend itself to any description. But if we look at the lines in the rest of the poem (a representative of which is provided above it), we see that they all have five feet, and the vast majority of those feet are iambic. We would describe the meter of this poem as iambic pentameter, while acknowledging that Dryden sometimes deviates from the pattern for dramatic effect.

  This rule is particularly important with the first feet in a line. Iambic lines will frequently begin with a trochee (this is called initial inversion):

   /  u   u   /  u     /    u  /
  Gather ye rosebuds while ye may... (Herrick, "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time")
  

  At first glance, it looks like this line begins with a dactyl. Only by looking at the rest of the line (and the rest of the poem) do we find that the majority of the feet are iambs. This is a line of iambic tetrameter with an intitial inversion.




• The stress makes the foot. Look at these lines from Ben Jonson's "Queen and Huntress":

    /    u   /   u      /     u   /    (u)
  Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
  
   /   u   /   u   /   u   /    (u)
  Now the sun is laid to sleep,
  
   /  u   /  u   /  u    /   (u)
  Seated in thy silver chair,
  
    /   u   /  u   /  u   /    (u)
  State in wonted manner keep.
  

  The lines are rhythmically and metrically identical, but what rhythm and meter are they? Rhythmically, we would call them trochaic. None of the lines begins on an iamb, so we're not dealing with initial inversion. But each line ends on a stressed syllable—the last half of the final trochee is missing (I have put them in parentheses above because they do not actually exist). Do we count this half-trochee as a foot? Yes, because the stress makes the foot. Each of these lines is trochaic tetrameter.

  Only the stress makes the foot. If the fragment is an unstressed syllable, it doesn't count. Here is the second line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 42:

   u   /  u    / u    /  u   /    u    / (u)
  And yet it may be said I lov'd her dearly.
  

  This is iambic pentameter. We have the beginning of another iamb with the last syllable, but we don't have the stressed part of that foot. And the stress makes the foot, so that fragment does not count.

  A spondee, although it contains two stresses, only counts as a single foot. A pyrrhic, although it contains no stresses, also counts as a foot.

Further practice. The following two pages are also available: