Double amphibrach

The double amphibrach is a variation of the double dactyl, similar to the McWhirtle but with stricter formal requirements. Meter and lineation are consistently amphibrachic (da DA da) rather than dactylic (DA da da), and the shortened fourth and eighth lines rhyme. In narrative sequences, the requirements that the first line be nonsense syllables and second line be a proper name are sometimes waived, but the sixth line requires a single diamphibrachic word (e.g. discriminatory, hallucinogenic, personification).

Jan D. Hodge in The Bard Double-Dactyled and Other Odd Pieces includes several pieces in this stanza form. His version of “Humpty Dumpty” begins:


 * As Humpty was sitting
 * upon a partition,
 * he misplaced his balance
 * and suffered a fall.
 * A sodden, unsightly
 * reorganization
 * of yolk and albumen
 * appeared by the wall.

Here is the seventh stanza of his rendering of Hamlet:


 * Laertes returns to
 * avenge his dead father
 * and finds his dear sister
 * half out of her mind,
 * her life in all senses
 * deteriorating:
 * her father’s been killed and
 * her lover’s unkind.

and his Taming of the Shrew concludes:


 * The husbands’ last wager
 * provides us a further
 * and fitting reversal
 * confirming this view;
 * the contest makes clear the
 * identification
 * we’d always suspected—
 * Bianca’s the shrew.