Anapaest

An anapaest, anapæst, or anapest, also called antidactylus, is a metrical foot used in formal poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one (as in a-na-paest); in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. It may be seen as a reversed dactyl

Dactyl (poetry)

A dactyl is a type of meter in poetry. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight...

. This word comes from the Greek

Greek language

Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...

 ανάπαιστος, anápaistos, literally "struck back" (a dactyl reversed), from 'ana-' + '-paistos', verbal of παίειν, paíein: to strike.

Here is an example from William Cowper

William Cowper

William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...

's "Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk" (1782), composed in anapaestic trimeter

Trimeter

In poetry, a trimeter is a metre of three metrical feet per line—example:...

:

I am out of humanity's reach

I must finish my journey alone

Because of its length and the fact that it ends with a stressed syllable and so allows for strong rhymes, anapaest can produce a very rolling, galloping feeling verse, and allows for long lines with a great deal of internal complexity.

An example of anapaestic tetrameter is the anonymously published A Visit From St. Nicholas:

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house

The following is from Byron

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron

George Gordon Byron, later Noel, 6th Baron Byron, of Rochdale, FRS, and commonly known today as Lord Byron was an English poet and a leading figure in Romanticism...

's The Destruction of Sennacherib

The Destruction of Sennacherib

The Destruction of Sennacherib is a poem by Lord Byron first published in 1815 in his Hebrew Melodies. It is based on an event described in the Bible during the campaign by Assyrian king Sennacherib to capture Jerusalem...

:

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

An even more complex example comes from Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

 (The Wanderings of Oisin). He intersperses anapests and iamb

Iamb

An iamb or iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable...

s, using six-foot lines (rather than four feet as above). Since the anapaest is already a long foot, this makes for very long lines.

Fled foam underneath us and 'round us, a wandering and milky smoke

As high as the saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide

And those that fled and that followed from the foam-pale distance broke.

The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces and sighed.

The mixture of anapaests and iambs in this manner is most characteristic of late 19th century verse, particularly that of Algernon Swinburne in poems such as The Triumph of Time and the choruses from Atalanta in Calydon. Swinburne also wrote several poems in more or less straight anapaests, with line-lengths varying from three feet ("Dolores") to eight feet ("March: An Ode"). However, the anapaest's most common role in English verse is as a comic metre, the foot of the limerick

Limerick (poetry)

A limerick is a five-line poem with a strict form , which intends to be witty or humorous, and is sometimes obscene with humorous intent. It may have its roots in the 18th century Maigue Poets of Ireland however there are examples of such verse in English dating back to Anglo-Saxon times...

, of Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer...

's poem The Hunting of the Snark

The Hunting of the Snark

300px|thumb|rightThe Hunting of the Snark is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll in 1874, when he was 42 years old. It describes "with infinite humour the impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature"...

, Edward Lear

Edward Lear

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...

's nonsense poems, T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM , was a poet, playwright, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are The Love Song of J...

's Book of Practical Cats, a number of Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss

Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen name Dr. Seuss. He published over 60 children's books, which were often characterized by imaginative characters, rhyme, and frequent use of trisyllabic meter...

 stories, and innumerable other examples.

Apart from their independent role, anapaests are sometimes used as substitutions in iambic verse. In strict iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter is one of many meters used in poetry and drama. It describes a particular rhythm that the words establish in each line. That rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables; these small groups of syllables are called "feet". The word "iambic" describes the type of foot that is used...

, anapaests are rare, but they are found with some frequency in freer versions of the iambic line, such as the verse of Shakespeare's last plays, or the lyric poetry of the 19th century.