Knight-in-Armour
Whenever I'm a shining Knight,I buckle on my armour tight;And then I look about for things,Like Rushings-Out, and Rescuings,And Savings from the Dragon's Lair,And fighting all the Dragons there.And sometimes when our fights begin,I think I'll let the Dragons win....And then I think perhaps I won't,Because they're Dragons, and I don't.
Words in this poem
- armour n.
- Defensive arms for the body; any clothing or covering worn to protect one's person in battle. [OE. armure, fr. F. armure, OF. armeure, fr. L. armatura. See Armature.]
- lair n.
- A place in which to lie or rest; especially, the bed or couch of a wild beast. [OE. leir, AS. leger; akin to D. leger, G. lager couch, lair, OHG. laga, Goth. ligrs, and to E. lie. See Lie to be prostrate, and cf. Layer, Leaguer.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Knight-in-Armour is in the public domain. This text is taken from Now We Are Six, Project Gutenberg ebook #70516; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: A. A. Milne, Knight-in-Armour, in Now We Are Six (1927), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70516, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/milne-now-we-are-six/knight-in-armour.html, id L27235.
Form and metre
Knight-in-Armour is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 AABBCCDDEE knightA · tightA · thingsB · rescuingsB · lairC · thereC · beginD · winD · won'tE · don'tE
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Whenever I'm a shining Knight, | 8 | ˘/˘··/˘· |
| I buckle on my armour tight; | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And then I look about for things, | 8 | ········ |
| Like Rushings-Out, and Rescuings, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘˘ |
| And Savings from the Dragon's Lair, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And fighting all the Dragons there. | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And sometimes when our fights begin, | 8 | ·/··/·˘/ |
| I think I'll let the Dragons win.... | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And then I think perhaps I won't, | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| Because they're Dragons, and I don't. | 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.