The Affront of Corpes CXIII
While thus the affair standeth wherein they had such shame,A host out of Morocco to besiege Valencia came.Their camp within the Quarter Field have they arrayed aright.For fifty thousand chieftains pavilions have they pight.'Twas the King Búcar if perchance of him ye e'er heard tell.
Words in this poem
- morocco n.
- A fine kind of leather, prepared commonly from goatskin (though an inferior kind is made of sheepskin), and tanned with sumac and dyed of various colors; -- said to have been first made by the Moors. [Named from Morocco, the country. Cf. Morris the dance.]
- valencia n.
- A kind of woven fabric for waistcoats, having the weft of wool and the warp of silk or cotton. [Perhaps fr. Valence in France.]
- aright adv.
- Rightly; correctly; in a right way or form; without mistake or crime; as, to worship God aright. [Pref. a- + right.]
- pight p. p.
- Pitched; fixed; determined.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Affront of Corpes CXIII is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Lay of the Cid, Project Gutenberg ebook #6088, the R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon 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: Anonymous, The Affront of Corpes CXIII, in The Lay of the Cid (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6088, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lay-of-the-cid/the-affront-of-corpes-cxiii.html, id L15118.
Form and metre
The Affront of Corpes CXIII is 5 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 80% of the lines. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic heptameter. 81% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 13.8 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in iambic heptameter.
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 AABB- shameA · cameA · arightB · pightB · tell
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 heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| While thus the affair standeth wherein they had such shame, | 13 | ···˘//˘······ |
| A host out of Morocco to besiege Valencia came. | 15 | ····˘/˘·˘/˘/˘˘· |
| Their camp within the Quarter Field have they arrayed aright. | 14 | ·····/˘···˘/˘/ |
| For fifty thousand chieftains pavilions have they pight. | 13 | ·/˘/˘/˘˘/˘··· |
| 'Twas the King Búcar if perchance of him ye e'er heard tell. | 14 | ······˘/······ |
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.