Question

choose the poem that uses trochaic meter.
bounding billow, cease thy motion,
bear me not so swiftly over!
cease thy roaring, foamy ocean!
i will tempt thy rage no more.

on the rim of a skyscraper’s 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.

adapted from mary robinson, \written between dover and calais, in july 1792\ and from carl sandburg, \hats\

Explanation:

To determine which poem uses trochaic meter, we analyze the stress pattern. Trochaic meter has a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (e.g., /BOUND-ing/).

• For the first poem: "Bounding" (BOUND-ing), "billow" (BIL-low), "cease" (CEASE-thy), "roaring" (ROAR-ing), etc. Most lines follow a trochaic pattern (stressed - unstressed).
• For the second poem: The rhythm is more free - verse, with irregular stress patterns (e.g., "On the rim" has "On" (unstressed) - "the" (unstressed) - "rim" (stressed), which does not follow trochaic meter).

So the first poem uses trochaic meter.

Answer:

The poem "Bounding billow, cease thy motion, Bear me not so swiftly over! Cease thy roaring, foamy ocean! I will tempt thy rage no more." (from Mary Robinson's work) uses trochaic meter.