The Marriage of the Cid's Daughters XCII
That thing beheld the outpost. He let the tocsin sound.Of the Cid Roy Diaz ready were the companies around.They sallied from the city with their arms appointed well.When they came on the Moriscos upon them swift they fell.They drove them from the gardens in exceeding sorry plight;Of the Moors a full five hundred they slaughtered in that fight.
Words in this poem
- tocsin n.
- An alarm bell, or the ringing of a bell for the purpose of alarm. [F., fr. OF. toquier to touch, F. toquer (originally, a dialectic form of F. toucher) + seint (for sein) a bell, LL. signum, fr. L. signum a sign, signal. See To]
- drove n.
- A collection of cattle driven, or cattle collected for driving; a number of animals, as oxen, sheep, or swine, driven in a body. [AS. draf, fr. drifan to drive. See Drive.]
- plight v. t.
- To weave; to braid; to fold; to plait. [OE. pliten; probably through Old French, fr. LL. plectare, L. plectere. See Plait, Ply.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Marriage of the Cid's Daughters XCII 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 Marriage of the Cid's Daughters XCII, in The Lay of the Cid (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6088, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lay-of-the-cid/the-marriage-of-the-cid-s-daughters-xcii.html, id L15097.
Form and metre
The Marriage of the Cid's Daughters XCII is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%). 82% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 14.0 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 AABBCC soundA · aroundA · wellB · fellB · plightC · fightC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| That thing beheld the outpost. He let the tocsin sound. | 13 | ··˘/·/····/˘· |
| Of the Cid Roy Diaz ready were the companies around. | 15 | ····/·/˘··/˘˘·· |
| They sallied from the city with their arms appointed well. | 14 | ·/˘··/˘···˘/˘· |
| When they came on the Moriscos upon them swift they fell. | 14 | ·············· |
| They drove them from the gardens in exceeding sorry plight; | 14 | ·····/˘·˘/˘/˘· |
| Of the Moors a full five hundred they slaughtered in that fight. | 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.