One of the four most important Classic
lyric one line
metres (the others being the
asclepiad metres, the
hendecasyllabic metre and the
pherecratic metre). While the
dactylic poetry (
epic,
boucolic etc.) and the
iambic and
trochaic poetry (
dramatic etc.) use feet arranged by certain orders and quantities, the lyric metres pertain to complete lines. A stanza doesn't need to be constituted of a single metric element (except for the
Alcaic and the
Sapphic Stanzas), but could interchange them and even occasionally add "feet-metre" lines and couplets (particularly the '
Elegiac Couplet'). The normal
lyric stanza has four lines.
Though the glyconic appears by itself in Catullus, it regularly appears in combinations with the lesser asclepiad or the pherecratic. It consists of eight syllables, and in fact is identical to the lesser asclepiad minus the choriambus (^--^) in the middle. The glyconic has no regular caesura.
The pattern of the glyconic is therefore:
- - - ^ ^ - ^ -
* - long or stressed syllable; ^ short or unstressed syllable.
Example (in Latin):
- - - ^ ^ - ^ -
donec gratus eram tibi
(Horatius, Od. III, 9, 1)