Rondeau: His Poisoned Shafts
His poisoned shafts, that fresh he dipsIn juice of plants that no bee sips,He takes, and with his bow renown'dGoes out upon his hunting ground,Hanging his quiver at his hips.
He draws them one by one, and clipsTheir heads between his finger-tips,And looses with a twanging soundHis poisoned shafts.
But if a maiden with her lipsSuck from the wound the blood that drips,And drink the poison from the wound,The simple remedy is foundThat of their deadly terror stripsHis poisoned shafts.
About this text
Rondeau: His Poisoned Shafts is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, Excluding the Eight Dramas, Project Gutenberg ebook #37804; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Bridges, Rondeau: His Poisoned Shafts, in The Growth of Love, and Other Poems (1873–1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #37804, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bridges-shorter-poems/rondeau-his-poisoned-shafts.html, id L20534.
Form and metre
Rondeau: His Poisoned Shafts is 15 lines in 3 verse paragraphs. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABBA dipsA · sipsA · renown'dB · groundB · hipsA
- 2 AA-- clipsA · tipsA · sound · shafts
- 3 AABBA- lipsA · dripsA · woundB · foundB · stripsA · shafts
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| His poisoned shafts, that fresh he dips | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| In juice of plants that no bee sips, | 8 | ········ |
| He takes, and with his bow renown'd | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Goes out upon his hunting ground, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Hanging his quiver at his hips. | 8 | /˘·/˘··· |
| He draws them one by one, and clips | 8 | ········ |
| Their heads between his finger-tips, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And looses with a twanging sound | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| His poisoned shafts. | 4 | ·/˘· |
| But if a maiden with her lips | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Suck from the wound the blood that drips, | 8 | ········ |
| And drink the poison from the wound, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The simple remedy is found | 8 | ·/˘/˘˘·· |
| That of their deadly terror strips | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| His poisoned shafts. | 4 | ·/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.