NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 11: Sorta Sapphic Pterodactyl

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Sorta Sapphic Pterodactyl

They challenged me to do a syllabic thing

Easy peasy I said, and started counting

But then they threw in Sapphic pterodactyls

I just couldn't hang

Not one to give up on the very first try

I looked over the instructions with fresh eye

But then they started talking about trochee

I'm no good with crafts

The syllables were likely as stressed as I 

I knew not before that syllables have feet

Or feet have syllables as the case may be

I learned something

~Lily~

The Instructions:

Our (optional) prompt for today departs from such concerns, however. Today, rather than being casual, I challenge you to get rather classically formal, and compose a poem in Sapphics. These are quatrains whose first three lines have eleven syllables, and the fourth, just five. There is also a very strict meter that alternates trochees (a two-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed, and the second unstressed) and dactyls (a three-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed and the remainder unstressed). The first three lines consist of two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees. The fourth line is a dactyl, followed by a trochee.