A paeonic metre is an ictosyllabic metre (q.v.) with three off-beats separating successive beats within the line:
I am the ve-ry mo-del of a mo-dern Ma-jor-General,
I’ve in-for-ma-tion ve-ge-ta-ble, a-ni-mal, and mineral,
(W. S. Gilbert, “The Major-General’s Song”)
There was move-ment at the sta-tion for the word had passed a-round
That the colt from old Re-gret had got away
(‘Banjo’ Patterson, “The Man from Snowy River”)
Paeonic metres, which are found only in light verse, are inherently unstable in that the middle of the three offbeats is itself a candidate for beating, which threatens a dissolution into duple metre: “I am the ve-ry model of a modern Ma-jor-General”.
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Citation: Groves, Peter Lewis. "Paeonic". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 June 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1759, accessed 09 June 2026.]
