Dactyl (poetry)

A dactyl (; from Greek δάκτυλος ) is a foot in poetic meter. In quantitative verse, often used in Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight. The best-known use of dactylic verse is in the epics attributed to the Greek poet Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. In accentual verse, often used in English, a dactyl is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables—the opposite is the anapaest (two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable).

An example of dactylic meter is the first line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem Evangeline (1847), which is in dactylic hexameter: :This is the / forest prim- / eval. The / murmuring / pines and the / hemlocks, The first five feet of the line are dactyls; the sixth a trochee.

Stephen Fry quotes Robert Browning's poem "The Lost Leader" as an example of the use of dactylic metre to great effect, creating verse with "great rhythmic dash and drive": : * Just for a handful of silver he left us * : * Just for a riband to stick in his coat * The first three feet in both lines are dactyls.

Another example is the opening lines of Walt Whitman's poem "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" (1859), a poem about the birth of the author's poetic voice: : Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking a dactyl, followed by a [trochee ('cradle'); then another dactyl followed by a trochee ('rocking')] : Out of the mockingbird's throat, the musical shuttle [2 dactyls, then a trochee ('throat, the'); then another dactyl, followed by a trochee] : . . . The dactyl "out of the..." becomes a pulse that rides through the entire poem, often generating the beginning of each new line, even though the poem as a whole, as is typical for Whitman, is extremely varied and "free" in its use of metrical feet.

Dactyls are the metrical foot of Greek and Latin elegiac poetry, which followed a line of dactylic hexameter with dactylic pentameter.

In the opening chapter of James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922), a character quips that his name is "absurd": "Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls" (Mal-i-chi Mull-i-gan).