A trochee is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. It consists of a long syllable followed by a short one.
Apart from the famous case of Longfellow's Hiawatha, this metre is rare in English verse, except with an extra long syllable added to each line, as in this example from Tennyson:
- Go not, happy day,
- From the shining fields;
- Go not, happy day,
- Till the maiden yields.
- Peter, Peter pumpkin-eater
- Had a wife and couldn't keep her.
- Twinkle, twinkle, little star
- How I wonder where you are.
- Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
- In the forests of the night
- Did he smile his work to see?
- And when the stars threw down their spears
- And watered Heaven with their tears
- . . .
- Did he who made the lamb make thee?