the line, that is the 2nd, 4th, 6th etc. elements of the verse. Thus even in lines where nearly all the syllables were long as in the above verse, it is possible to feel the iambic rhythm of the line. Any long or anceps element except the last could be resolved into two short syllables, giving rise to lines like the following (the resolved elements are underlined): | – uu – uu | – uu – – | uu – u – | "Right now today Amphitryon will come here from the army" The above line also illustrates another feature found in Plautus and Terence, namely iambic shortening or , where the syllables ab ex- are scanned as two short syllables. Accentual-syllabic iambic trimeter In English and similar accentual-syllabic metrical systems, a line of iambic trimeter consists of three iambic feet. The resulting six-syllable line is very short, and few poems are written entirely in this meter. The 1948 poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke uses the trimeter: ...We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. William Blake's "Song ('I Love the Jocund Dance')" (1783) uses a loose iambic trimeter that sometimes incorporates additional weak syllables: I love the jocund dance, The softly breathing song, Where innocent eyes do glance, And where lisps the maiden's tongue. I love the laughing gale, I love the echoing hill, Where mirth does never fail, And the jolly swain laughs his fill. As a component of common meter The English iambic trimeter is much more frequently encountered as one-half of the common meter, which consists of alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter lines: O God Our help in ages past Our hope in years to come our shelter from the stormy blast And our eternal home Isaac Watts, a paraphrase of Psalm 90," Our God, Our Help in Ages Past, Another example, from the American poet Emily Dickinson: If you were coming in the fall I'd brush the summer by With half a smile and half a spurn, As housewives do a fly. Emily Dickinson, "If You Were Coming in the Fall" Citations Types of verses