Analysis of Broken Dreams
William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)
THERE is grey in your hair.
Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath
When you are passing;
But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing
Because it was your prayer
Recovered him upon the bed of death.
For your sole sake -- that all heart's ache have known,
And given to others all heart's ache,
From meagre girlhood's putting on
Burdensome beauty -- for your sole sake
Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,
So great her portion in that peace you make
By merely walking in a room.
Your beauty can but leave among us
Vague memories, nothing but memories.
A young man when the old men are done talking
Will say to an old man, 'Tell me of that lady
The poet stubborn with his passion sang us
When age might well have chilled his blood.'
Vague memories, nothing but memories,
But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed.
The certainty that I shall see that lady
Leaning or standing or walking
In the first loveliness of womanhood,
And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,
Has set me muttering like a fool.
You are more beautiful than any one,
And yet your body had a flaw:
Your small hands were not beautiful,
And I am afraid that you will run
And paddle to the wrist
In that mysterious, always brimming lake
Where those What have obeyed the holy law
paddle and are perfect. Leave unchanged
The hands that I have kissed,
For old sake's sake.
The last stroke of midnight dies.
All day in the one chair
From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have
ranged
In rambling talk with an image of air:
Vague memories, nothing but memories.
Scheme | abccabdefegeghIcjhkIljcmnopqrpseqtsenautaI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111011 11110100111 11110 11011110010 011111 0101010111 1111111111 010110111 111101 100101111 10110101101 1101001111 11010001 110111011 1100101100 01110111110 111111111110 01010111011 11111111 1100101100 1001111101 01001111110 10110110 0011110 010111101 111100101 1111001101 01110101 11101100 011011111 010101 0101001101 1111010101 100101101 011111 1111 011111 110011 1111011111 1 0101111011 1100101100 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,506 |
Words | 291 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 42 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,211 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 289 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 21, 2023
- 1:28 min read
- 260 Views
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"Broken Dreams" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 4 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/39298/broken-dreams>.
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