A Roundhead's Rallying Song
How beautiful is the battle,How splendid are the spears,When our banner is the skyAnd our watchword Liberty,And our kingdom lifted high above the years.
How purple shall our blood be,How glorious our scars,When we lie there in the nightWith our faces full of lightAnd the death upon them smiling at the stars.
How golden is our hauberk,And steel, and steel our sword,And our shield without a stainAs we take the field again,We whose armour is the armour of the Lord!
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,]
- glorious a.
- Exhibiting attributes, qualities, or acts that are worthy of or receive glory; noble; praiseworthy; excellent; splendid; illustrious; inspiring admiration; as, glorious deeds. [OF. glorios, glorious, F. glorieux, fr. L. gloriosus. See Glory, n.]
- 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.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Roundhead's Rallying Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from Collected Poems: Volume One, Project Gutenberg ebook #30501; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Alfred Noyes, A Roundhead's Rallying Song, in Collected Poems, Volume One (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #30501, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/noyes-collected/a-roundhead-s-rallying-song.html, id L21499.
Form and metre
A Roundhead's Rallying Song is 15 lines in 3 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
See 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 -A--A battle · spearsA · sky · liberty · yearsA
- 2 -ABBA be · scarsA · nightB · lightB · starsA
- 3 -ABBA hauberk · swordA · stainB · againB · lordA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| How beautiful is the battle, | 8 | ·/˘˘··/˘ |
| How splendid are the spears, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| When our banner is the sky | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And our watchword Liberty, | 8 | ·/˘/·/˘˘ |
| And our kingdom lifted high above the years. | 11 | ·//˘/˘····· |
| How purple shall our blood be, | 8 | ·/˘·/˘·· |
| How glorious our scars, | 7 | ·/˘˘/˘· |
| When we lie there in the night | 7 | ······· |
| With our faces full of light | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And the death upon them smiling at the stars. | 11 | ······/˘··· |
| How golden is our hauberk, | 8 | ·/˘·/˘/˘ |
| And steel, and steel our sword, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| And our shield without a stain | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| As we take the field again, | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| We whose armour is the armour of the Lord! | 11 | ··/˘··/˘··· |
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.