Octameter is a line of verse made up of eight metrical feet. Because it is longer than the more common five- or six-foot line, it often feels expansive, rolling, or emphatic, and it may be divided by a natural pause in the middle.
Example
In the hush / of the harbor / at dawn / the gulls / were circling / slowly / above / the masts
Trochaic
- Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary
- Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-
- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
- As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door
- (Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven")
Dactylic
- Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight,
- The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight;
- The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed
- Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade
- (A. C. Swinburne, "March: An Ode")