What is Spondee in Poetry?
Spondees are enjoyable to use in poetry—when you comprehend their exceptional impact on graceful meter.
A spondee is a metrical foot comprising of two focused on syllables. The word itself is Old French, and it comes from Latin spondēus (thusly got from the Greek spondeios). It initially alluded to the music that was made close by drinks, or contributions to divine beings. Spondaic meter—a whole poem dependent on spondees—is uncommon, however scholars consistently use spondees as a component of other metrical examples to change the beat of a line.
Instances of Spondee in Poetry
To figure out where the accentuation is set in a word, say the word for all to hear. To hear an illustration of a spondee, state the words “transport stop” for all to hear and see how the two syllables are focused. Other spondee models incorporate “toothache,” “bookmark,” and “handshake.”
The most ideal approach to figure out how to utilize spondee in your composing is to read a few models so anyone might hear.
- “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)
Greatness be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-shading as a brinded bovine;
For rose-moles all in texture upon trout that swim;
New firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Scene plotted and pieced – crease, decrepit, and furrow;
And all exchanges, their stuff and tackle and trim.
Everything counter, unique, extra, weird;
Whatever is flighty, freckled (who knows how?)
With quick, slow; sweet, sharp; adazzle, faint;
He fathers-forward whose magnificence is past change:
Applause him.
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ piece includes a few instances of spondee, including “rose-moles,” “all exchanges,” “extra, unusual,” “quick, slow,” “sweet, sharp,” “fathers-forward,” “past change,” and “Acclaim him.” These tangible words hang out as opposed to the principal line of the poem, which is comprised of trochees and sounds smooth and delicate in contrast with the dynamic and energizing spondees.
- “Break, break, break” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1842)
Break, break, break,
On thy cold dim stones, O Sea!
What’s more, I would that my tongue could express
The contemplations that emerge in me.
O, well for the angler’s kid,
That he yells with his sister at play!
O, well for the mariner chap,
That he sings in his boat on the sound!
What’s more, the impressive boats go on
To their shelter under the slope;
Yet, O for the dash of a vanish’d hand,
Furthermore, the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy ridges, O Sea!
Yet, the delicate elegance of a day that is dead
Will never return to me.
The first and second lines of Tennyson’s poem follow a spondaic meter. “Break, break,” “cold dark,” and “O Sea!” are altogether spondees, giving the earliest reference point of this poem a forceful energy.
