Analysis of Colonus' Praise
William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)
Chorus. Come praise Colonus' horses, and come praise
The wine-dark of the wood's intricacies,
The nightingale that deafens daylight there,
If daylight ever visit where,
Unvisited by tempest or by sun,
Immortal ladies tread the ground
Dizzy with harmonious sound,
Semele's lad a gay companion.
And yonder in the gymnasts' garden thrives
The self-sown, self-begotten shape that gives
Athenian intellect its mastery,
Even the grey-leaved olive-tree
Miracle-bred out of the living stone;
Nor accident of peace nor war
Shall wither that old marvel, for
The great grey-eyed Athene stareS thereon.
Who comes into this countty, and has come
Where golden crocus and narcissus bloom,
Where the Great Mother, mourning for her daughter
And beauty-drunken by the water
Glittering among grey-leaved olive-trees,
Has plucked a flower and sung her loss;
Who finds abounding Cephisus
Has found the loveliest spectacle there is.
because this country has a pious mind
And so remembers that when all mankind
But trod the road, or splashed about the shore,
Poseidon gave it bit and oar,
Every Colonus lad or lass discourses
Of that oar and of that bit;
Summer and winter, day and night,
Of horses and horses of the sea, white horsffes.
Scheme | ABCCDEEDFGHHIJJKLMNNBOAPQQJJPRSA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101101010011 0111011000 01001111 1110101 1110111 01010101 10101001 1101010 0100010101 0111010111 0100101100 10011101 1001110101 11001111 11011101 01111101 110111011 1101000101 10110101010 010101010 1000111101 110100101 110101 110110011 0111010101 0101011111 1101110101 01011101 100010111010 1110111 10010101 11001010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,191 |
Words | 199 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 32 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 977 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 197 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:00 min read
- 64 Views
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"Colonus' Praise" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/39304/colonus%27-praise>.
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