Trimeter: a metre in which the line has three sounded beats and one silent beat or rest (
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses (Yeats, “Easter 1916”)
The repeated final silent beat gives such verse an awkward, incomplete, thwarted quality, here clearly in tune with the subject matter.
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60 words
Citation: Groves, Peter Lewis. "Trimeter". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 June 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1762, accessed 09 June 2026.]
