The Affront of Corpes CXX
'Twas a great day in the palace of the Cid Campeador,When he had slain King Búcar and they won the field of war.He raised his hand, he plucked his beard: "To Christ now glory be,Who is the Lord of all the Earth, for my desire I see,That with me in the battle my two sons should front the foe.Of them most noble tidings to Carrión shall go:How they are greatly honored, and what renown they gain."
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Affront of Corpes CXX 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 CXX, 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-cxx.html, id L15124.
Form and metre
The Affront of Corpes CXX is 7 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 57% of the lines. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 13.7 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- campeador · war · beA · seeA · foeB · goB · gain
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 'Twas a great day in the palace of the Cid Campeador, | 14 | ······/˘······ |
| When he had slain King Búcar and they won the field of war. | 14 | ·············· |
| He raised his hand, he plucked his beard: "To Christ now glory be, | 14 | ···········/˘· |
| Who is the Lord of all the Earth, for my desire I see, | 15 | ··········˘/˘·· |
| That with me in the battle my two sons should front the foe. | 14 | ·····/˘······· |
| Of them most noble tidings to Carrión shall go: | 12 | ···/˘/˘····· |
| How they are greatly honored, and what renown they gain." | 13 | ···/˘/˘··˘/·· |
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.