Paeon

The paeon is a four-syllable foot with one stressed and three unstressed syllables; depending on the position of the stress, the first (—UUU), second (U—UU), third (UU—U) and fourth (UUU—) paeon are distinguished. In the practice of syllabo-tonic verse, paeons are usually treated not as independent measures but as a way of describing iambic and trochaic lines with a regular omission of every second metrical stress (a pyrrhic). Such a "paeonic" reading explains the characteristic smooth, slightly slowed rhythm of certain poems. The concept of the paeon is useful for the fine analysis of the rhythmic structure of disyllabic measures, in which stresses in fact fall not on every strong position but on every other one.