Acephalous Line
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An acephalous or headless line is a variety of
catalectic A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line. A line ...
line in a
poem Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...
which does not conform to its accepted
metre The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...
, due to the first
syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
's omission. Acephalous lines are usually deliberate variations in
scansion Scansion ( , rhymes with ''mansion''; verb: ''to scan''), or a system of scansion, is the method or practice of determining and (usually) graphically representing the Metre (poetry), metrical pattern of a line of Poetry, verse. In classical poetr ...
, but this is not always obvious. Robert Wallace argues in his essay " Meter in English" that the term ''acephalous line'' seems "pejorative", as if criticising the poet's violation of scansion, but this view is not widely held among critics. Acephalous lines are common in anapestic metre, especially in
limerick Limerick ( ; ) is a city in western Ireland, in County Limerick. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and is in the Mid-West Region, Ireland, Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. W ...
s. :There was an old man of Tobago, :Who lived on rice, gruel, and sago, :Till, much to his bliss, :His physician said this - :"To a leg, sir, of mutton you may go." ::(Anonymous) The third line is scanned x ' x x ' instead of x x ' x x '.


References

Poetic rhythm {{poetry-stub