amphibrach

In English accentual-syllabic poetry, an amphibrach is a stressed syllable surrounded by two unstressed syllables.

The double amphibrach is a variation of the double dactyl, similar to the McWhirtle but with stricter formal requirements.

(Went to the shop I; rarely used, can be treated as a beginning of a line of a poem written in amphibrach due to uncommon word order.)

A related form is the double amphibrach, similar to the McWhirtle but with stricter rules more closely resembling the double dactyl.

Except for lines two and five (each an iamb) and lines eight and nine (each an amphibrach), no two lines have the same metrical form.

The amphibrach is also often used in ballads and light verse, such as the hypermetrical lines of Sir John Betjeman's "Meditation on the A30".

When, distraught, she remarks, "I take it you have left me and will not be coming back," his response is, "Now, was that a line of anapests . . . or the rarer, shyer amphibrach?"