Triple Meter
Quick answer: Triple meter is verse built from three-syllable feet such as anapaests and dactyls, one stress to two light syllables. Hear its gallop, waltz and comic swing.
Triple meter is verse measured in feet of three syllables, one stressed and two unstressed, so each beat arrives cushioned by a pair of light steps. Its rising form is the anapaest (da-da-DUM) and its falling form the dactyl (DUM-da-da). Where duple meter walks, triple meter skips, gallops or waltzes; the extra unstressed syllable in every foot changes the entire physics of the line.
Poets reach for triple meter when they want conspicuous motion. It carries cavalry charges, dances, drinking songs, limericks and a large share of children's verse, and it converts to music more readily than any other measure. The cost of all that momentum is gravity: triple rhythms take effort to keep serious, and a lapse of attention turns elegy into jingle.
The poem
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
Clement Clarke Moore, 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' (1823)
How It Works
Two light syllables per stress means the voice spends most of its time in motion between beats, which reads as speed. An invented anapaestic tetrameter: At the end of the lane there's a gate in the wall. An invented dactylic line: Silvery, shivery, over the rooftops the morning arrives. Keeping pure triple time in English is hard, since the language keeps offering iambic phrases, so most triple-meter poems admit duple substitutions, especially in the first foot. Readers forgive these easily once the gallop is established.
Where You Will See It
Byron's The Destruction of Sennacherib is the textbook anapaestic gallop, and Browning built How They Brought the Good News around actual hoofbeats. Clement Clarke Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas bounces on anapaests, which is one reason children absorb it whole. The limerick is anapaestic by definition. On the falling side, Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade uses dactylic movement for cavalry, and Hardy threaded triple rhythms through lyric poems with unusual seriousness, proving the meter can mourn when handled with care.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Commit to the momentum: triple meter half-heartedly kept sounds like broken duple meter. Choose subjects with motion in them, riding, dancing, weather, flight, or exploit the mismatch deliberately by setting grave matter to light time, as Hardy and Auden sometimes did. Watch your syllable inventory; English contractions and small words help fill the two light positions naturally. And read drafts aloud at performance speed, because triple meter's faults, padding and jingle, only show at full gallop.
What poets can take from this
- Establish the triple swing within the first line; readers set their internal clock immediately.
- Allow an iamb in the opening foot of anapaestic lines; the convention is centuries old.
- Choose moving subjects, or play grave content against the light rhythm on purpose.
- Avoid padding the two light positions with empty words; every syllable still has to mean.
- Read Byron's Sennacherib aloud once before drafting; the gallop is caught, not taught.
Try it yourself
Write a poem in anapaestic tetrameter about a bicycle ride downhill, keeping the gallop pure for three quatrains. Then add a final quatrain where the rider brakes, and slow the meter with duple substitutions to match.
Questions
What is the difference between anapaestic and dactylic meter?
Both are triple meters, but the anapaest rises, placing its stress last (da-da-DUM), while the dactyl falls, placing its stress first (DUM-da-da). Anapaests gallop forward; dactyls roll downhill.
Why does triple meter sound like a song or a jingle?
Two unstressed syllables per beat keep the voice moving quickly between evenly spaced pulses, which is the timing of waltzes and jigs. The ear files that regular lilt under music rather than speech.
Can triple meter be used for serious poems?
Yes, though it demands control. Hardy, Tennyson and Auden all produced grave poems in triple rhythms, often letting the lightness of the meter cut against dark subject matter to unsettling effect.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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