Analysis of The Curse Of Cromwell
William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)
YOU ask what -- I have found, and far and wide I go:
Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew,
The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay,
And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen, where are they?
And there is an old beggar wandering in his pride -- -
His fathers served their fathers before Christ was crucified.
O what of that, O what of that,
'What is there left to say?
All neighbourly content and easy talk are gone,
But there's no good complaining, for money's rant is on.
He that's mounting up must on his neighbour mount,
And we and all the Muses are things of no account.
They have schooling of their own, but I pass their schooling by,
What can they know that we know that know the time to die?
O what of that, O what of that,
What is there left to say?
But there's another knowledge that my heart destroys,
As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy's
Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;
That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company,
Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,
That I am still their setvant though all are underground.
O what of that, O what of that,
What is there left to say?
I came on a great house in the middle of the night,
Its open lighted doorway and its windows all alight,
And all my friends were there and made me welcome too;
But I woke in an old ruin that the winds. howled through;
And when I pay attention I must out and walk
Among the dogs and horses that understand my talk.
O what of that, O what of that,
What is there left to say?
Scheme | xabbccDB xxeeffDB gghhiiDBjjaakkDB |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111111010111 1011010101001 01000101100101 00110010010111 0111110100011 1101110011110 11111111 111111 1110010111 1111010110111 1110111111 0101010111101 11101111111101 1111111110111 11111111 111111 110101011101 10100110010101 011111110101 1010010111100 11010101010101 11111111110 11111111 111111 1110110010101 1101010110101 011101011101 1110111010111 011101011101 010101010111 11111111 111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,547 |
Words | 310 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 16 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 38 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 404 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 103 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 22, 2023
- 1:35 min read
- 190 Views
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