Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 3. Practical Guidance for Aspiring Writers
Guidance in Writing Poetry

Some Metrical Matters [3]

It is absolutely necessary in order to learn the trochaic rhythm to write at first strictly regular trochaic metres with equal lines. There can be irregularities in the verse, but this type of metre least of all can bear a free licence — variations must be occasional, not altered about with a free hand. Such variations are an additional syllable at the beginning, an occasional dactyl — but these must be occasional only.... A word like glorious can be scanned either as a dactyl or a trochee, the two vowels in the latter case being run into each other as if i were y.