Few poems illustrate meters perfectly; please see the explanation at the bottom of the main page in this unit.

Although it's rough and irregular, the dominant rhythm in Robert Browning's "Up at a Villa--Down in the City" is anapestic, with six beats per line--so we seem to have anapestic hexameter. The lines tend to split in the middle, separating themselves into hemistiches with caesuras.

                           Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once;
                            In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.
                            'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
                            The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell
                            Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.

Tennyson's lines from Maud are metrically similar:

 But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind,
When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word?

Many lines from Tennyson's "The Voyage of Maeldune" are more closely anapestic:

   *     *     /   |  *  *   /      |  *   / | *     *    /   |  *   *    /  |   *    *    /
And we rolled upon capes of crocus and vaunted our kith and our kin