Sir Guy
Also the Pagans raise alarms,And ring the bells for fear; at lastMy prison walls will be well past.
Ho! in the name of the Trinity,Let down the drawbridge quick to me,And open doors, that I may seeGuy the good knight!
Nay, Launcelot,With mere big words ye win us not.
About this text
Sir Guy is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #22650; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Morris, Sir Guy, in The Defence of Guenevere (1858), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22650, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/morris-defence-guenevere/sir-guy.html, id L07132.
Form and metre
Sir Guy is 9 lines in 3 verse paragraphs. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.2 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 22% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 -AA alarms · lastA · pastA
- 2 -AA- trinity · meA · seeA · knight
- 3 AA launcelotA · notA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Also the Pagans raise alarms, | 8 | /˘·/˘·˘/ |
| And ring the bells for fear; at last | 8 | ········ |
| My prison walls will be well past. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Ho! in the name of the Trinity, | 9 | ······/˘˘ |
| Let down the drawbridge quick to me, | 8 | ···/···· |
| And open doors, that I may see | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Guy the good knight! | 4 | ···· |
| Nay, Launcelot, | 4 | ·/˘· |
| With mere big words ye win us not. | 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.