Perfect iambic pentameter

[xiphias]

As most of you are probably aware, most things written in iambic pentameter are sorta approximate -- they're kinda five iambs in a row, but they're maybe squished a little, or one of the accents is kind of a little off, or whatever.

So Lis and I were briefly thinking about lines which were perfect -- things which it's almost impossible to say and NOT have it come out as five iambs in a row. To the point that you want to try to de-emphasize the iambic pentameterness of it, for fear of being too sing-songy, but you just CAN'T, because the words are so strongly shaped that way.

I mentioned, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?"

And Lis mentioned, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

Any other lines that particularly stick in your head as having that "dih DAH dih DAH dih DAH dih DAH dih DAH" rhythm?

Iambs arranged in a pentameter.
They have a strongly singy-songy beat.
If written without rhymes, they're called "blank verse."
Bank verse approximates natural speech.
But it is far more formal and precise.
Its beat forms a hypnotic kind of sound.
Incantatory, chanting, sort of thing.

Comments

[ailbhe]

I had an American tutor once who swore up and down that a bunch of sonnets weren't "really" iambic pentameter, when actually they seemed pretty perfect to me. I think accents might make a difference.

Tangentially speaking

[kiya]

A while back, papersky asked me to look over her Shakespeare-pameladean-Bujold fanfic work. And I did, and made suggestions that she found useful, and so on.

And for about a week after that conversation, I had severe iambitis. Everything came out in meter.

Re: Tangentially speaking

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

I once stuck a character with iambitis. He was trying to hold a conversation while writing a sestina in iambic hexameter (it was a contract. He ... thinks that way), and didn't notice what was going on until he got a stray 'administration'.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Er, but "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" isn't perfect iambic pentameter, surely? It's two dactyls followed by two iambs, isn't it?

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I was going to negate this one, too. :-) Only I actually scan it as even more irregular than that:
"DAH DAH di DAH DAH di di DAH di DAH?"

jessruth's classic "found" piece of iambic pentameter is,
"I ate my toast, and then I went to school."

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Not accidental, but slightly concealed: the closing two lines of Ursula le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas:"

But they seem to know where they are going,
the ones who walk away from Omelas.


And Kit's line from Dido, quoted in my icon:

"I'll frame me wings of wax like Icarus--"

[navrins]

Lots of Lion in Winter is almost, but not quite, iambic pentameter.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

"You can make more, I can't. You think I want
To disappear? One son is all I've got,
And you can blot him out and call me cruel.
For these ten years you've lived with everything
I've lost, and loved another [woman] through it all..."

[navrins]

That's closer than anything I could find on a quick scan.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

As far as perfect lines go, I think the line from Sonnet 18 that rhymes with "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" works a bit better: "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May."