Scansion in Poetry Lesson: How to Use It Effectively? 

Lesson Overview

• What Is Scansion?
• Significance & Why It Matters
• Types of Meter and Metrical Feet
• Examples of Scansion in Poetry
• How to Recognize and Use Scansion

Understanding scansion is important because it helps readers and writers grasp the underlying structure that gives a poem its rhythmic flow. In performance, scansion guides you where to lift or soften your voice, so you deliver the poem as it was intended to sound.

What Is Scansion?

Scansion in poetry is the process of analyzing a poem's meter by marking each syllable as stressed or unstressed and dividing the lines into metrical feet. In practice, to scan a line of verse means to break it down into these feet and identify the pattern of emphasis (the rhythm) in the words. Essentially, scansion reveals the beat of a poem – much like musical notation for poetry – showing which syllables you naturally stress and which you do not.

Significance & Why It Matters

Scansion helps you choose a meter that suits your subject and to keep your lines consistent (or break the pattern deliberately for impact). By examining the meter, you can appreciate how the poem's form contributes to its tone and meaning. 

For example, a steady iambic rhythm (da-DUM da-DUM…) might create a gentle, flowing feel, whereas a jerky trochaic rhythm (DUM-da DUM-da…) can produce an urgent or haunting effect. Scansion also lets you see where a poet deviates from a pattern for emphasis. 

In short, knowing how to scan poetry deepens your comprehension and enjoyment of the poem, and it's a valuable skill if you're analyzing poetry for class or composing your own verses. It provides a common vocabulary (iambic pentameter, trochaic tetrameter, etc.) to discuss and compare poetic rhythms.

Take This Quiz:

English 3 Scansion Quiz!

Types of Meter and Metrical Feet

In English poetry, meter is defined by the type of foot and the number of feet in each line. A foot is the basic unit of rhythm, usually containing one stressed syllable and one or more unstressed syllables. The most common types of metrical feet are listed below:

Each foot's pattern repeats across a line. We classify a line of poetry by both the foot type and the number of feet it contains. Common line lengths (meters) are:

• Monometer – 1 foot per line (rare in practice)
  
• Dimeter – 2 feet per line
  
• Trimeter – 3 feet per line
  
• Tetrameter – 4 feet per line
  
• Pentameter – 5 feet per line
  
• Hexameter – 6 feet per line (also called an Alexandrine in French, or used in classical epic meter)

For example, iambic pentameter means each line has five iambs (five sets of unstressed-stressed). Trochaic tetrameter means each line has four trochees (four sets of stressed-unstressed), and so on.

Not every line in a poem will perfectly fit a pattern-poets sometimes add or drop syllables or substitute one type of foot for another for effect-but these terms describe the dominant rhythm.

By knowing these types, you can name the meter of most poems (e.g., "This poem is in anapestic trimeter").

Examples of Scansion in Poetry

Seeing scansion in action will make these concepts clearer. Here are a few classical and contemporary examples, with their scansion explained:

• Classical Example (Iambic Pentameter):"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" – from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.
  
  • This famous line is written in iambic pentameter. If we scan it, we get five iambic feet: "shall I | comPARE | thee TO | a SUM | mer's DAY." Each bold syllable is stressed.
    
  • The unstressed-stressed "da-DUM" pattern repeats five times, giving the line a steady, heartbeat-like rhythm typical of Shakespeare's work.

• Classical Example (Trochaic Tetrameter):"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble." – from Shakespeare's Macbeth. These witch-chant lines are in trochaic tetrameter.
  
  • Scanning "Double double toil and trouble," we emphasize Doub- (in "Double") then the next syllable is soft: DOUble | DOUble | TOIL and | TROUble. There are four major stresses (at the start of each foot), followed by lighter syllables, making four trochees.
    
  • This galloping DUM-da DUM-da pattern creates a hypnotic, singsong effect appropriate for a spell. (Notice the last syllable "-ble" is a bit dangling – an extra unstressed syllable at line's end, which is common in trochaic meter.)

• Contemporary Example (Dactylic Tetrameter):"Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies." – from The Beatles ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds").
  
  • This lyric line scans as dactylic tetrameter. Read it with emphasis as: PICture your | SELF in a | BOAT on a | RIver with TANgerine | TREES and mar|malade SKIES... Here, the prevailing foot is a dactyl (one strong beat followed by two lighter beats).
    
  • We can hear the pattern in "PIC-ture your-self in a" (strong-weak-weak), repeated across the line. Four such feet give it a swinging, waltz-like rhythm.

• Classical Example (Anapestic Meter):"'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house…" – from Clement Clarke Moore's poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas." This opening is in anapestic tetrameter (common in many nursery rhymes and light verse).
  
  • Scanning the phrase "'Twas the NIGHT before CHRISTmas," we get an anapest pattern: da-da-DUM / da-da-DUM (unstressed, unstressed, stressed, repeated).
    
  • Each line of the poem generally has four anapestic feet, giving a lively, galloping pace. Anapestic meter often creates a whimsical or energetic tone, as you can hear in this holiday poem.

These examples show how scansion identifies the meter: by marking the stresses, we determined the foot pattern and counted the feet per line to name the meter. Whether it's a Shakespearean sonnet or a Beatles song lyric, the principles of scansion apply the same way.

How to Recognize and Use Scansion

Recognizing and using scansion in poetry involves a few clear steps. Here's a simple method to scan a line of poetry and interpret its meter:

• Read the line aloud normally: Pay attention to how you naturally emphasize certain syllables. Our everyday speech already alternates stressed and unstressed sounds.
  
  • (For instance, say the word "record" as a noun versus a verb: "RECord" vs. "reCORD." The first version stresses the first syllable (a trochee), and the second version stresses the second syllable (an iamb). This illustrates you can hear stress patterns just by speaking.)

• Mark the stressed and unstressed syllables: Go through the line and label each syllable as either stressed (strong emphasis) or unstressed (weaker emphasis). You can underline or bold the stressed syllables, or use a markup like ˘ for unstressed and ′ for stressed.
  
  • In simple typing, some people CAPITALIZE or bold the stressed syllables and leave unstressed in lowercase. For example, take "Tyger Tyger, burning bright" – you might mark it as TYger TYger, BURNing BRIGHT to show the four strong beats.

• Divide the line into feet: Insert a vertical bar | to separate each foot once you have the stress pattern. Each foot will have 2 or 3 syllables depending on the pattern (for instance, an iamb or trochee has 2 syllables per foot, a dactyl or anapest has 3).
  
  • Using the previous example: TYger | TYger | BURNing | BRIGHT. You can see four feet here, which suggests a tetrameter line.

• Identify the pattern and meter name: Look at the pattern of one foot and identify it (does it match an iamb, trochee, dactyl, or anapest from the table of types?). Then count how many feet are in the line. Combine those to name the meter.
  
  • In "Tyger Tyger, burning bright," the pattern in each foot is stressed then unstressed (that's a trochee), and there are four feet, so it's trochaic tetrameter. If a line had five unstressed-stressed feet, it would be iambic pentameter, and so on.

• Consider variations or irregularities: Sometimes a poem will have an extra syllable or a substitution (e.g., two stressed syllables in a row making a spondee).
  
  • Notice these, as they are often intentional. For instance, a poet might start an iambic line with a trochee to emphasize a word, or end a trochaic line with an extra unstressed syllable (called a feminine ending). Recognizing these deviations is part of advanced scansion, but for most introductory purposes, focus on the dominant pattern.

By following these steps, you can recognize the scansion of most poems – essentially uncovering the blueprint of their rhythm. Once you've scanned a poem, you can use that insight to better understand the poem's effect.