The Ballad of King Arthur

In ancient Britain, songs called ballads were sung about legendary heroes. This ballad is about King Arthur’s
childhood, when a mysterious sword appears near a church gate, firmly lodged in a massive stone. Golden letters on
the stone declare that whoever can pull the sword from the stone “shall be Lord and King of all England.” A
tournament is scheduled for New Year’s Day, when all the knights will try to pull the sword from the stone. Arthur’s
foster brother, Sir Kay, has forgotten his sword and asks Arthur to ride his horse back home to get it.

“O foster brother! backward speed,

Ride fast for love of me,
And when thou reachest Ector’s1 house,
My sword bring back to me.”

5 “That will I,” said the gallant youth,

Riding away alone;
But when he reached the castle gate
He found the wardour2 gone,

And all the inmates, great and small,

10 Off to the tournament;
Baffled and wroth3 he turned his horse
And to the churchyard went.

“Ten thousand pities ‘twere,” he said,

“My dearest brother Kay
15 Should at the joust4 withouten a sword
Appear in disarray.”

So when he found no knights were there

But to the jousting gone,
Lightly yet fierce the sword he seized,
20 And pulled it from the stone,

And to Sir Kay delivered it,

Who wist5, as soon as seen,
That ‘twas the sword from out the stone;

1 Ector Sir Kay’s father

2 wardour guard
3 wroth angry
4 joust competition
5 wist understood
 Then said, “Full well I ween6

25 I have the sword, and I must be

The King of all England.”
But when he showed it to his sire7
Sir Ector gave command

That to the church he should repair

30 And swear upon the book
How gat he then the sword; but he,
Fearing his sire’s rebuke,

Told how his foster brother came

When all the knights were gone,
35 And light and fiercely plucked the sword
From out the magic stone.

“Now try again,” Sir Ector said;

Whereat they all assayed,
But none save Arthur there availed
40 To sunder out the blade

Then happed8 it that on Twelfth day

The Barons all assay
To pluck the sword, but none prevail
Save Arthur on that day.

45 Then waxed9 they wroth, and Candlemas10

Was fixed for the assay,
Yet still no knight but Arthur
Could pluck the sword away.

Then at high feast of Eastertide,

6 ween think, suppose

7 sire father
8 happed it it happenened
9 waxed grew
10 Candlemas religious festival
 50 Also at Pentecost11,
None but young Arthur loosed the sword—
The knights their temper lost.

But when the Lord Archbishop came,

All cried with one accord,
55 “We will have Arthur for our King,
God wills him for our lord.”

And down on bended knee they fell

To pay him homage due;
And thus he won Excalibur12
60 and all fair England too.

Soon Scotland, and the North, and Wales,

To him obeisance made,
Won by prowess of his knights
And of his trusty blade

11 Eastertide, Pentecost religious festivals

12 Excalibur the name of Arthur’s sword
 The Oven Bird by Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
5 Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
10 He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

1. Paraphrase each line

2. Label:
 rhyme scheme
 alliteration
 assonanace
 consonance

3. What type of sonnet is this?

4. How do you know?

 Poetic Structure: Sonnet

Many poems follow a traditional structure, or form that dictates how the poem is organized. For
example, a narrative poem tells a story and has a plot, setting, and characters. They can be short or very
long; there are few rules, but they usually rhyme since older ones were meant to be sung.

In contrast, a sonnet has many rules. Sonnets are fourteen lines long and follow a very strict rhythm or
meter throughout the poem, called iambic pentameter. In iambic pentameter, each line contains 5 pairs
of stressed and unstressed beats. There are two different kinds of sonnets, and they follow different
rhyming rules:

Shakespearean: Petrarchan:

Contains 3 quatrains and 1 couplet Contains an octave and a sestet.

Rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG Rhyme scheme is usually ABBA CDDC EFG EFG

The problem/question/argument is presented in The problem/question/argument is presented in

the first 12 lines and the solution/answer comes the octave and the solution/answer comes in the
in the couplet. sestet.

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
5 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.