[Michael Juster]

What are your favorite poems in a dactylic meter?

[Susan McLean]

Double dactyls. There are some great ones in Jiggery Pokery, but I've seen some other good ones as well.

Susan

[Tim Murphy]

Hardy's "The Voice." And except for the garbaging wardogs, Tennyson's Battle of Brunanburgh is pretty good. If you can do them in the originals, The Iliad and the Aeniad are pretty good too.

[Mark Allinson]

Tim, that is one of my favourite Hardy poems.


The Voice

by Thomas Hardy


BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POSTWoman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POSTSaying that now you are not as you were
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POSTWhen you had changed from the one who was all to me,
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POSTBut as at first, when our day was fair.
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POSTCan it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POSTStanding as when I drew near to the town
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST Even to the original air-blue gown!
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST Heard no more again far or near?
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST Thus I; faltering forward,
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST Leaves around me falling,
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST BANNED POST And the woman calling.