Analysis of He Remembers Forgotten Beauty

William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)



When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wrought with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth;
The roses that of old time were
Woven by ladies in their hair,
The dew-cold lilies ladies bore
Through many a sacred corridor
Where such grey clouds of incense rose
That only God's eyes did not close:
For that pale breast and lingering hand
Come from a more dream-heavy land,
A more dream-heavy hour than this;
And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
I hear white Beauty sighing, too,
For hours when all must fade like dew.
But flame on flame, and deep on deep,
Throne over throne where in half sleep,
Their swords upon their iron knees,
Brood her high lonely mysteries.


Scheme AABBCCDDEFGEHIJJKKLLMMNN
Poetic Form
Metre 11111111 110101 11110101 0111111 010011101 01111101 11010011 111101001 01011110 10110011 01110101 110010100 11111011 11011111 111101001 11011101 011101011 01111111 11110101 110111111 11110111 11011011 11011101 10110100
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 841
Words 157
Sentences 3
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 24
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 681
Words per stanza (avg) 155
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

47 sec read
160

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. more…

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