User:Dactylion/hendecasyllabic verse

The hendecasyllabic verse, also known as Phalaecian hendecasyllabic or simply Phalaecian, is a quantitative metre used in Ancient Greek Aeolic verse, in scolia, and later by the Roman poet Catullus. Each line has eleven syllables, "hendeka" being the Greek word for "eleven." The heart of the line is the choriamb (- u u -). The pattern is as follows (using "-" for a long syllable, "u" for a short and "x" for an "anceps" or variable syllable):

x x  - u u -  u - u - -     
(where x x is either - u or - -  or u -)

Although the term normally refers to the Phalaecian form, other classical hendecasyllables exist. The Sapphic hendecasyllabic, used in the Sapphic stanza, has the following pattern:

- x -  x  - u u -  u - -   

Of the polymetric poems of Catullus, forty-three are hendecasyllabic. The metre has been imitated in English, notably by [[Alfred Tennyson ], Swinburne and Robert Frost, whose use of the metre in "For Once Then Something" shows him to be anything but the country rube he sometimes pretended to be. In English, the long/short pattern normally becomes a stress/unstress pattern, although Tennyson maintained the quantitative features of the metre, as can be seen in the following excerpt:

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,

Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,

Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem

All composed in a metre of Catullus...

("Hendecasyllabics")

This form should not be confused with the Italian hendecasyllable.

Example

Catullus 1