Act the Third: Scene XXV
SERVANT. The Lord Governor AureliusSummons Cyprian to his presence,And Justina.
JUSTINA. Ah! how happy,If 'tis for the wished-for ending.Do not, Cyprian, be disheartened.
CYPRIAN. Faith, zeal, courage, all possess me:For if life must be the ransomOf my slavery to the devil,He who gave his soul for thee,Will he not give God his person?
JUSTINA. I once said that I could love theeBut in death, and since together,Cyprian, we now must die,What I promised I present thee.
Words in this poem
- cyprian a.
- Belonging to Cyprus.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Act the Third: Scene XXV 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 Third: Scene XXV, in The Wonder-Working Magician (1873), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6372, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/calderon-magico-prodigioso/act-the-third-scene-xxv.html, id L26656.
Form and metre
Act the Third: Scene XXV is 15 lines in 4 stanzas. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%).
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.
- 3 A--A- meA · ransom · devil · theeA · person
- 4 A-AA theeA · together · dieA · theeA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| SERVANT. The Lord Governor Aurelius | 9 | /˘··/˘··· |
| Summons Cyprian to his presence, | 9 | /˘/˘˘··/˘ |
| And Justina. | 4 | ·˘/˘ |
| JUSTINA. Ah! how happy, | 7 | ˘/˘··/˘ |
| If 'tis for the wished-for ending. | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Do not, Cyprian, be disheartened. | 9 | ··/˘˘·˘/˘ |
| CYPRIAN. Faith, zeal, courage, all possess me: | 10 | /˘··/˘·˘/· |
| For if life must be the ransom | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Of my slavery to the devil, | 9 | ··/˘˘··/˘ |
| He who gave his soul for thee, | 7 | ······· |
| Will he not give God his person? | 8 | ······/˘ |
| JUSTINA. I once said that I could love thee | 11 | ˘/˘········ |
| But in death, and since together, | 8 | ·····˘/˘ |
| Cyprian, we now must die, | 7 | /˘˘···· |
| What I promised I present thee. | 8 | ··/˘·˘/· |
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.