In English-language versification, triple meters -- anapest and dactylic -- sound fairly good, I think, to set to music, since triple meter is so common in English-language songs, but attempts to use such meters for serious verse almost always quickly start sounding absurd, as in Poe's Ulalame:

It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir-
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Can anyone really read that without wishing Spike Jones had covered it?

Anyway, I think this is why serious song lyrics written in triple meter, like the one that started this thread, tend to sound absurd when denuded of their music, and it's also one reason why such lyrics are so easy to parody.

There are of course some good serious triple meter poems, like Byron's The Destruction of Sennacherib or Blake's The Sick Rose, but these are exceptions.

Jon Corelis
Songs by William Blake