The Banishment of the Cid LXI
"Do thou eat, don Rodrigo, and prepare to slumber sweet.For myself I will let perish, and nothing will I eat."And in no way were they able to prevail till the third day,Nor make him eat a mouthful while they portioned the great prey.
Words in this poem
- mouthful n.
- As much as is usually put into the mouth at one time.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Banishment of the Cid LXI 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 Banishment of the Cid LXI, in The Lay of the Cid (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6088, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lay-of-the-cid/the-banishment-of-the-cid-lxi.html, id L15069.
Form and metre
The Banishment of the Cid LXI is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic heptameter. 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 14.2 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 sweetA · eatA · dayB · preyB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| "Do thou eat, don Rodrigo, and prepare to slumber sweet. | 14 | ····˘/˘·˘/·/˘· |
| For myself I will let perish, and nothing will I eat." | 14 | ··/···/˘·/˘··· |
| And in no way were they able to prevail till the third day, | 15 | ······/˘·˘/···· |
| Nor make him eat a mouthful while they portioned the great prey. | 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.