Dactylic hexameter¶
dactylic_hexameter · form · validated
Six feet, each a dactyl or a spondee, the fifth almost always a dactyl. Read as accentual verse, stress standing in for the classical quantity English has not got; the fifth foot is fixed as a dactyl and the caesura is not checked.
Provenance¶
- Source: Traditional; the metre of Homer and Virgil
- Attribution:
traditional— classical or folk; no single origin to name - Checkability:
self— decidable from the text and its parameters alone - Attested:
codified— formulated as a rule by a tradition rather than declared by an author
Details¶
- Kind: restrictive
- Languages: en
- Requires:
tokens,stress,syllables.heuristic - Deterministic: yes
- In other languages: Hexameter (de), Hexamètre dactylique (fr)
Notes¶
Checked as English accentual verse: classical quantity is vowel length, which English does not have, so stress stands in for it. The caesura is not checked, and the fifth foot is fixed as a dactyl because a spondaic fifth is rare enough that accepting it would cost more in false positives than it buys.
Prompt hint¶
Write six-foot lines of dactyls and spondees, with a dactyl in the fifth foot.
Examples¶
longfellow-evangeline¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
This is the forest primeval the murmuring pines and the hemlocks
Source: Longfellow, Evangeline, opening line
prose-of-similar-length¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
I walked down to the shop this morning to buy a loaf
Source: constructed counterexample
empty-text-is-not-vacuous¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
Source: constructed counterexample
goethe-hermann-und-dorothea¶
de — this text satisfies the procedure.
Hab ich den Markt und die Straßen doch nie so einsam gesehen
Source: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Hermann und Dorothea (1797), opening line
voss-odyssee¶
de — this text satisfies the procedure.
Sage mir, Muse, die Taten des vielgewanderten Mannes
Source: Johann Heinrich Voß, tr., Homers Odüssee (1781), opening line