English 376: Scanning a Poem

Below you'll find the scansion tips and definitions from class on Thursday (our first day). I hope that these items will be helpful in your paper-writing process. Feel free to print this page and bring it with you to class on Tuesday-it may be helpful during some group work on the poems.

Scansion is the analysis of stressed and unstressed syllables in a poem. You may also find these terms useful:

  • Caesura--a natural pause, not always marked by a comma.
  • Alliteration--the repetition of a particular sound, usually a consonant and usually in a conspicuous place, like the beginning or ending of a word.
  • Assonnance--the repetition of similiar or identical vowel sounds. Consider the long i in the opening two lines of KeatsOde on a Grecian Urn.
  • Consonnance--the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, like "live-love," or "pitter-patter."
  • Poetic diction--the elevated language, usually heavy with metaphor, that lets us know we are not just hearing a fast-food order or a newscast. For example: "thou still unravished bride of quietness."

    • Meter:The individual foot

    Meter: How many feet

  • Monometer: this is rare. Here is an example of a form you will not often encounter.
    • Robert Herrick's "Upon His Departure Hence":
    Thus I
    Pass by
    And die
    As one,
    Unknown
    And gone
    Iím made,
    a shade,
    And laid
    Iíth grave
    There have
    My Cave
    Where tell
    I dwell
    Farewell
  • Dimeter: two feet:
    • Tennyson's "Charge of the light brigade"
    Cannon to right of them
    Cannon to left of them,
    Cannon in front of them
    Volleyed and thundered.
    Ý
  • Trimeter: this is getting obvious, isn't it? Three feet.

    • Ý
  • Tetrameter: four feet. Often used for comic verse.
    • I sat there with Sally, we sat there, we two
    And I said, How I wish we had something to do...
    All we could do was to sit, sit, sit, sit
    And we did not like it, not one little bit.
    Then something went bump!Ý How that bump made us jump!
    We looked and we saw him step in on the mat
    We looked, and we saw him, the Cat in the Hat.
  • Pentameter: by far the most common form in English. It is a very speech-like line.

    • Ý
  • Hexameter; six feet, also known as the alexandrine--used singly in Spencerian stanza and sprinkled in Pope's heroic couplets.

    • Ý
  • Heptameter: seven feet

    • Ý
  • Octameter: eight feet


    • Obviously, the last two forms are fairly specialized and have a heavy, awkward feel to them. These forms of meter also apply to free-verse poems, which will necessarily display more variation than carefully metered, traditional forms like the sonnet. But remember, strict metrical adherence, even in a very conventional poem, would drive a listener bonkers. Listen for the moments of variation:Ý they provide aural relief as well as emphasis.

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