Acephalous line

An acephalous or headless line is a variety of catalectic line in a poem which does not conform to its accepted metre, due to the first syllable's omission.^[1] Acephalous lines are usually deliberate variations in scansion, but this is not always obvious.

It is a technique employed often in the concluding lines of hymn texts, and has been employed in poetry to change tone or announce a conclusion, including its use in Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" and A. E. Housman's "To An Athlete Dying Young." Robert Wallace argues in his essay "Meter in English" that the term acephalous line seems "pejorative", as if criticising the poet's violation of scansion, but this view is not widely held among critics.^[2]

References

1. Cuddon, John Anthony (1998). A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Wiley. p. 6. ISBN 9780631202714.
2. A Review of Meter in English: A Critical Engagement, edited by David Baker