Is there a name for the meter used in Clementine:
Drove she ducklings to the water
Every morning just at nine
Struck her foot against a splinter
Fell into the foaming brine
Or in Schiller's Ode to Joy?
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Most descriptions I've seen of trochaic tetrameter don't mention the possibility of the lost syllable on alternate lines.
I have not been able to find a name for this in the literature on poetic forms that I consulted in English, German or Dutch.
The English-language sources I have consulted include the following:
This last measure is seldom used by itself, being generally found alternately with lines of seven syllables. This variety froms on of the commonest trochaic measures in use.
Of eight lines mixed, with verses of seven syllables, and three rhymes (1,5: 2, 4, 6, 8: 3, 7), Jonson's Drink to me only.
With verses of seven syllables, without stanzas, Milton's L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, part of Comus, Epitaph on Marchioness of Winchester.
But it may well admit of a doubt, whether this trochaic measure is appropriate at such solemn seasons as that of Advent, when the Church is meditating on the awful transactions of the Day of Judgment. And yet the Hymn on the Second Advent, which is most familiar to English ears, is composed in a tetrameter trochaic broken into two parts, and rendered more joyful by double rhymes,— (...). The mention of this Hymn may introduce the remark that the magnificent ancient tetrameter trochaic of fifteen syllables, to which reference must be made, has now unfortunately, but almost universally, been broken into two parts, the former consisting of eight, the latter of seven syllables. The bi-section of the verse,—which seems to have been occasioned by the exigences of Printing, not being able to include the fifteen syllables in narrow double columns,—has been a serious evil to Hymnology.
A Sevens hymn consists of stanzas of four lines, of seven syllables each—or four troachic feet, wanting the unaccented syllable in the last. A footnote adds that "And hence the seven's measure is called in poetic metres teh trochaic tetrameter catalectic measure."
The most common form of trochaic meter is the tetrameter, in alternate lines of eight syllables and seven. The line of seven syllables is denominated catalectic; (...). This forms a favorite hymn measure; the usual 8's and 7's of our hymns.
But besides these [licences], there is another licence very generally extended to the trochaic; viz. that of cutting off part of the concluding syllable. This is allowed in every species of the trochaic verse, whether of two, three, or four feet; so that we have lines of three, five, and even seven syllables, and many specimens of them have been given already.
The poem is written in trochaic tetrameter. (...) Consider, for example, the first line of the fourth stanza. When we scan the line, or identify its stresses, it appears as follows: (...)
As you can see, this line has four trochees; the line as a whole contains eight syllables. If you scan the next line, however, you'll notice that it has only seven syllables: (...)
The line has four stresses, but only three complete trochees, because Longfellow has eliminated the final unstressed syllable. This dropping of the final syllable in a line of verse is called caTatexis. Throughout the poem, the first and third lines of each stanza have eight syllables, but the second and fourth lines have only seven: they are caTatectic. By leaving off the final unstressed syllable, Longfellow requires the reader to take a brief pause. This short pause slows the pace of the poem, adding to this somber tone.
Not incidentally, the stanza form that "A Psalm for Life" uses—two eight-syllable lines alternative with two seven-syllable lines—is also used in many Protestant hymns.
What the above sources, especially those from the 19th century, show is that authors of literature manuals are very familiar with the form, even pointing out that it is "one of the commonest trochaic measures in use" (Lowres) but never mention that it might have a name of its own, except as a type of hymn. The Longfellow example shows that even in a discussion that introduces technical terms such as "caTatexic" (with a capital T in the third position; of course, the intended meaning is "catalectic"), no name is given to this specific verse form, even though that may be reasonably expected here.
The situation is similar in German-language sources, where is trochaic tetrameter is known as the trochäischer Vierheber:
- Andere kretische Versarten dagegen, wie die Verbindung der katalektischen trochäischen Tripodie und eines kretischen Dimeters, also die Umkehrung des soeben besprochenen Verses, sowie Dimeter mit akatalektischer trochäischer Tripodie und katalektische Tetrapodien und akatalektische Dipodie sind unzulässig; (...).
Mithin zählt der Vers in der Regel acht, respective sieben Silben. Ich sage in der Regel; denn nach seinem Vorbilde erlaubt sich Thomas zuweilen eine freiere Behandlung der Verse. (...)
In Dutch, the Algemeen letterkundig lexicon defines over 4,600 literary terms but its entry for tetrameter mentions no names of specific variants.
Based on the above findings, I doubt that there is a specific terms for a trochaic tetrameter with alternating lines of eight and seven syllables. In order to describe this type of verse form, it appears to be necessary to rely on terms such as catalectic and acatalectic (with reference to meter) or masculine and feminine rhyme (of that applies to the rhyme).
I would call it trochaic tetrameter with alternating feminine and masculine rhymes. Even though it a fairly common meter, I don't know a better name for it.
If you leave out the last syllable of a trochaic line of poetry, it's called a catalectic line. So if all the lines of your poem had trochaic feet with the last foot reduced to one syllable, this would be called catalectic trochaic tetrameter.
But saying trochaic tetrameter with catalectic alternate lines is much too cumbersome a phrase, whereas alternating feminine and masculine rhymes is easier to understand (if not shorter).
A feminine ending of a line of iambic poetry ends on an unstressed syllable, while a masculine ending ends on a stressed syllable. It is fairly common to alternate feminine and masculine endings in English poetry. Another example of this meter is Housman's poem Reveillé, which begins:
Wake: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,
Trampled to the floor it spanned,
And the tent of night in tatters
Straws the sky-pavilioned land.
There are also poems where only the lines with masculine endings rhyme. You can describe these by the phrase "with alternating feminine and masculine endings." A good example of these is Maya Angelou's poem Equality, containing the following stanza:
Take the blinders from your vision,
take the padding from your ears,
and confess you've heard me crying,
and admit you've seen my tears.
