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 c

Explanation:

Trochaic meter consists of trochees (a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable). In the second poem:

• “Bounding billow, cease thy motion,”: “Bounding” (BOUND - ing), “billow” (BIL - low), “cease” (CEASE), “thy” (THY), “motion” (MO - tion). The pattern of stressed - unstressed (for multi - syllable words) or just stressed (monosyllables) is more in line with trochaic meter compared to the first poem. The first poem has a more irregular rhythm without the consistent trochaic pattern.

Answer:

The second poem (the one starting with “Bounding billow, cease thy motion”) uses trochaic meter.