Trochaic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line of four trochaic feet. The word "tetrameter" simply means that the poem has four trochees. A trochee is a long syllable, or stressed syllable, followed by a short, or unstressed, one. Stresses on a syllable are detected by simply noting which syllable one puts stress on when saying the word. In many cases, this is the syllable which is pronounced loudest in the word, for example, the word 'purity' will take a stress on the first syllable and an unstress on the others.
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Literary examples
Two of the best-known examples are Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha and the Finnish Kalevala.
This can be demonstrated in the following famous excerpt from "Hiawatha's Childhood", where the accented syllables of each trochee have been bolded:
The Kalevala also follows a loose trochaic tetrameter, though it also has some slight variations to the normal pattern, which cause some people to term it the "Kalevala Metre". Because English tradition is so strongly iambic, some feel that it has an awkward or unnatural feel to the ear.
Another clear example is Philip Larkin's "The Explosion."
Trochaic tetrameter is also employed by Shakespeare in several instances to contrast with his usual blank verse (which is in iambic pentameter). For instance, in Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare frequently writes the lines of his fairies in catalectic trochaic tetrameter, as is evidenced by Puck's lines, here:
Later he and Oberon have a conversation entirely in catalectic trochaic tetrameter, which is unusual, since generally Shakespeare used pentameter for dialogue sequences.
See also Edgar disguised as Poor Tom in King Lear:
Good examples of the rhythmic scheme, albeit not in English, are found in two famous thirteenth century medieval Latin hymns. Dies Irae (used as the sequence in the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass), the first two verses of which are...
...and Stabat Mater (a standalone meditation on the suffering of Mary, Jesus Christ's mother, during his crucifixion), the first two verses of which are:
Kalevala meter
Baltic Finnic (e.g. Estonian, Finnish, Karelian) folk poetry uses a form of trochaic tetrameter that has been called the Kalevala meter. The Finnish and Estonian national epics, Kalevala and Kalevipoeg, are both written in this meter. The meter is thought to have originated during the Proto-Finnic period. Its main rules are as follows (examples are taken from the Kalevala):
Syllables fall into three types: strong, weak, and neutral. A long syllable (one that contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or ends in a consonant) with a main stress is metrically strong, and a short syllable with a main stress is metrically weak. All syllables without a main stress are metrically neutral. A strong syllable can only occur in the rising part of the second, third, and fourth foot of a line:
A weak syllable can only occur in the falling part of these feet:
Neutral syllables can occur at any position. The first foot has a freer structure, allowing strong syllables in a falling position and weak syllables in a rising position:
It is also possible for the first foot to contain three or even four syllables.
There are two main types of line: a normal trochaic tetrameter and a broken trochaic tetrameter. In a normal tetrameter, word-stresses and foot-stresses match, and there is a caesura between the second and third feet:
A broken tetrameter (Finnish murrelmasäe) has at least one stressed syllable in a falling position. There is usually no caesura:
Traditional poetry in the Kalevala meter uses both types with approximately the same frequency. The alteration of normal and broken tetrameters is a characteristic difference between the Kalevala meter and other forms of trochaic tetrameter.