First Sight by Philip Larkin

[fozz725]

Hi there, I would like to get some help regarding the metre of the poem First Sight. At first glance I would say that it is in the majority trochaic pentameter so he can finish on the stressed syllable to give a strong rhyme scheme throughout the poem, but still give a gentle feeling of hope.

My teacher says thats wrong and its Iambic pentametre but I just can't see why. Could anybody on this forum tell me who is correct?

Here's the poem

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow

[BenJohnson]

You are both wrong, but your teacher is half right :)

Pentameter would have five feet to a line (or roughly 10 syllables) , since there are only 4 feet to a line it is tetrameter. So you were both wrong.

However it is Iambic albeit catalectic, or in this case better known as headless Iambic since the first unstressed syllable is missing. Although you could insist it is trochaic and missing the final syllable, however since English is largely iambic your first assumption should be that the basic foot will be Iambic, if that assumption is clearly wrong then look around for other feet it could be.

There is a good comparison of headless Iambic verse and Trochaic verse here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalectic).

[Forcetheword]

Yeah its trochaic tetrameter catalectic or headless iambic tetrameter.

Expect you could impress your teacher with that.

[fozz725]

Thank you to the above posters for their help. Its been very very helpful.