Act the Second: Scene IX
FABIUS. You return, then, to this street.
LELIUS. Yes; the life that I deploreI return to seek once moreWhere 'twas lost. Ah! guide my feet,Love, to find it!--
FABIUS. That house thereIs Justina's; come away.
LELIUS. Wherefore, when I will to-dayOnce again my love declare.And as she, I saw it plain,Trusted some one else at night,'Tis not strange, in open light,That I try to soothe my pain.Leave me, go; for it is bestThat I enter here alone.My rank in Antioch is known,My father Governor; thus drestIn his robe as 'twere, my strongPassion listening to no mentor,I Justina's house will enterTo protest against my wrong.
Words in this poem
- deplore v. t.
- To feel or to express deep and poignant grief for; to bewail; to lament; to mourn; to sorrow over. [L. deplorare; de- + plorare to cry out, wail, lament; prob. akin to pluere to rain, and to E. flow: cf. F. déplorer. Cf. Flow.]
- wherefore adv.
- For which reason; so; -- used relatively. [Where + for.]
- soothe v. t.
- To assent to as true. Testament of Love. [Originally, to assent to as true; OE. so to verify, AS. ges to prove the truth of, to bear witness. See Sooth, a.]
- mentor n.
- A wise and faithful counselor or monitor. [From Mentor, the counselor of Telemachus, Gr. Monitor.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Act the Second: Scene IX is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Wonder-Working Magician, Project Gutenberg ebook #6372, the Denis Florence MacCarthy translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Act the Second: Scene IX, in The Wonder-Working Magician (1873), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6372, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/calderon-magico-prodigioso/act-the-second-scene-ix.html, id L26622.
Form and metre
Act the Second: Scene IX is 21 lines in 4 stanzas. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in trochaic 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 A streetA
- 2 BBA- deploreB · moreB · feetA · it
- 3 CD thereC · awayD
- 4 DCEFFEGHHGI--I dayD · declareC · plainE · nightF · lightF · painE · bestG · aloneH · knownH · drestG · strongI · mentor · enter · wrongI
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| FABIUS. You return, then, to this street. | 9 | ···˘/···· |
| LELIUS. Yes; the life that I deplore | 9 | ·······˘/ |
| I return to seek once more | 7 | ·˘/···· |
| Where 'twas lost. Ah! guide my feet, | 7 | ······· |
| Love, to find it!-- | 4 | ···· |
| FABIUS. That house there | 5 | ····· |
| Is Justina's; come away. | 7 | ·˘/˘·˘/ |
| LELIUS. Wherefore, when I will to-day | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| Once again my love declare. | 7 | ·˘/··˘/ |
| And as she, I saw it plain, | 7 | ······· |
| Trusted some one else at night, | 7 | /˘····· |
| 'Tis not strange, in open light, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| That I try to soothe my pain. | 7 | ······· |
| Leave me, go; for it is best | 7 | ······· |
| That I enter here alone. | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| My rank in Antioch is known, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| My father Governor; thus drest | 8 | ·/˘/˘˘·· |
| In his robe as 'twere, my strong | 7 | ······· |
| Passion listening to no mentor, | 8 | /˘/˘··/· |
| I Justina's house will enter | 8 | ·˘/˘··/˘ |
| To protest against my wrong. | 7 | ·/····· |
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.