Dactyl Examples

A dactyl is a type of foot, or beat, in a poem that has three syllables. There is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. A dactyl has the same type of rhythm or beat as a waltz.

Three Syllable Words that are Dactyls:

Alphabet

Mockingbird

Examples of Dactyl from Poem:

From Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd":;

I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,

Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,

To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.

From the nursery rhyme:

Hickory, dickory, dock.

The mouse ran up the clock.

The clock struck one, the mouse ran down.

Hickory, dickory, dock.

From Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade"

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!" he said.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.