Question

choose the poem that uses trochaic meter.
on the rim of a skyscrapers forehead
i looked down and saw: hats: fifty thousand hats:
swarming with a noise of bees and sheep, cattle and waterfalls,
stopping with a silence of sea grass, a silence of prairie corn.
bounding billow, cease thy motion,
bear me not so swiftly over!
cease thy roaring, foamy ocean!
i will tempt thy rage no more.
from carl sandburg, \hats\ and adapted from mary robinson, \written between dover and calais, in july 1792\

Explanation:

Trochaic meter has a pattern of stressed - unstressed syllables. In "Bounding billow, cease thy motion, Bear me not so swiftly over! Cease thy roaring, foamy ocean! I will tempt thy rage no more", we can analyze the syllables. For example, "Bound - ing" (stressed - unstressed), "bil - low" (stressed - unstressed), "cease - thy" (stressed - unstressed) etc. follow the trochaic pattern. The first poem does not have a consistent trochaic pattern as it is more of a free - verse like description without the regular stressed - unstressed alternation.

Answer:

The second poem (Bounding billow, cease thy motion, Bear me not so swiftly over! Cease thy roaring, foamy ocean! I will tempt thy rage no more) uses trochaic meter.