The Knight's Tomb
Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn?Where may the grave of that good man be?--By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn,Under the twigs of a young birch tree!The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,And whistled and roar'd in the winter alone,Is gone,--and the birch in its stead is grown.--The Knight's bones are dust,And his good sword rust;--His soul is with the saints, I trust.
About this text
The Knight's Tomb is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of Coleridge, Project Gutenberg ebook #8208; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Knight's Tomb, in Poems of Coleridge (1796–1817), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8208, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/coleridge-poems/the-knight-s-tomb.html, id L00375.
Form and metre
The Knight's Tomb is 11 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 55% of the lines. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in common measure. 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.3 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in common measure.
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 ABABCCDDEEE o'kellynA · beB · helvellynA · treeB · hearC · yearC · aloneD · grownD · dustE · rustE · trustE
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? | 11 | ······/˘··· |
| Where may the grave of that good man be?-- | 9 | ········· |
| By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, | 13 | ············· |
| Under the twigs of a young birch tree! | 9 | ········· |
| The oak that in summer was sweet to hear, | 10 | ····/˘···· |
| And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year, | 11 | ·/˘········ |
| And whistled and roar'd in the winter alone, | 11 | ·/˘····/˘˘/ |
| Is gone,--and the birch in its stead is grown.-- | 10 | ·········· |
| The Knight's bones are dust, | 5 | ····· |
| And his good sword rust;-- | 5 | ····· |
| His soul is with the saints, I trust. | 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.