CHORIAMB

The choriamb is symbolized  as  / u u /   A slash represents a stressed syllable, and the small u represents non-stressed.  

The choriamb sounds like a bobble in the poet’s attempt at perfect rhythm such as iambic pentameter.  More recently, however, critics have come to accept the choriamb as a useful trick – even a deliberately  employed trick (bobble) by the poet to break boring monotony. And you know how monotonous iambic pentameter of any length can be. 

Here are some lines from classic poets that might be used to illustrate the choriamb, or what has come to be accepted as choriamb and not technical error.

1.           Milton! Thou should’st be living at this hour.  (iambic pentameter – Wordsworth - “London, 1802”)

2.           A traveler between life and death.  (i.tetrameter  – Wordsworth  - “She was a Phantom”)

3.           On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined.  (i.pentameter - Lord Byron – “There was a Sound of          Revelry by Night”)

Example 1 opens with a choriamb.  Example 3, likewise. The choriamb in example 2 starts on the last syllable of the word traveler. \

Examples can be found in Keats and Shelley as well although the term was not employed at that time.