Analysis of Meditations In Time Of Civil War
William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)
I
Ancestral Houses
SURELY among a rich man s flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.
Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not Sung
Had he not found it certain beyond dreams
That out of life's own self-delight had sprung
The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems
As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung
Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams,
And not a fountain, were the symbol which
Shadows the inherited glory of the rich.
Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
Called architect and artist in, that they,
Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone
The sweetness that all longed for night and day,
The gentleness none there had ever known;
But when the master's buried mice can play.
And maybe the great-grandson of that house,
For all its bronze and marble, 's but a mouse.
O what if gardens where the peacock strays
With delicate feet upon old terraces,
Or else all Juno from an urn displays
Before the indifferent garden deities;
O what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways
Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease
And Childhood a delight for every sense,
But take our greatness with our violence?
What if the glory of escutcheoned doors,
And buildings that a haughtier age designed,
The pacing to and fro on polished floors
Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined
With famous portraits of our ancestors;
What if those things the greatest of mankind
Consider most to magnify, or to bless,
But take our greatness with our bitterness?
II
My House
An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower,
A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall,
An acre of stony ground,
Where the symbolic rose can break in flower,
Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable,
The sound of the rain or sound
Of every wind that blows;
The stilted water-hen
Crossing Stream again
Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows;
A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone,
A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth,
A candle and written page.
Il Penseroso's Platonist toiled on
In some like chamber, shadowing forth
How the daemonic rage
Imagined everything.
Benighted travellers
From markets and from fairs
Have seen his midnight candle glimmering.
Two men have founded here. A man-at-arms
Gathered a score of horse and spent his days
In this tumultuous spot,
Where through long wars and sudden night alarms
His dwinding score and he seemed castaways
Forgetting and forgot;
And I, that after me
My bodily heirs may find,
To exalt a lonely mind,
Befitting emblems of adversity.
III
My Table
Two heavy trestles, and a board
Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword,
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralise
My days out of their aimlessness.
A bit of an embroidered dress
Covers its wooden sheath.
Chaucer had not drawn breath
When it was forged. In Sato's house,
Curved like new moon, moon-luminous
It lay five hundred years.
Yet if no change appears
No moon; only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art.
Our learned men have urged
That when and where 'twas forged
A marvellous accomplishment,
In painting or in pottery, went
From father unto son
And through the centuries ran
And seemed unchanging like the sword.
Soul's beauty being most adored,
Men and their business took
Me soul's unchanging look;
For the most rich inheritor,
Knowing that none could pass Heaven's door,
That loved inferior art,
Had such an aching heart
That he, although a country's talk
For silken clothes and stately walk.
Had waking wits; it seemed
Juno's peacock screamed.
IV
My Descendants
Having inherited a vigorous mind
From my old fathers, I must nourish dreams
And leave a woman and a man behind
As vigorous of mind, and yet it seems
Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
And there's but common greenness after that.
And what if my descendants lose the flower
Through natural declension of the soul,
Through too much business with the passing hour,
Through too much play, or marriage with a fool?
May this laborious stair and this stark tower
Become a roofless min that the owl
May build in the cracked mason
Scheme | ABXCDCDCEFGHGHGHIIJKLKLKMMNBNONOXXPQPQRQST AMUFVUEVXWWXLXXXXXYRXYZN1 ZN1 2 QQ2 AE3 3 XBBSXXMT4 4 5 5 XXXX6 J3 3 7 7 UX5 5 8 8 9 9 XXQHQHQH1 XUXUXUX6 |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (24%) |
Metre | 1 01010 100101111001 0101011101 110010101 0111010101 0111010111 111110111 0101100100 1101110101 1111110111 1111110011 1111110111 001010011111 111110111 1100111011 0101000101 10010010101 110010111001 110010011 10010011101 0101111101 0100111101 1101010111 010011111 11110101101 111101011 11001011100 1111011101 01001010100 111101011 11010111 0100111001 111010110100 11010111 010101101 0101011101 01110011001 1101011010 1111010111 0101110111 111010110100 1 11 11010011010 011110111 1101101 10010111010 11011101000 0110111 1100111 010101 10101 1101010101 0101010111 0111011101 0100101 1110011 011101001 1011 01010 010100 110011 111110100 1111010111 1001110111 011001 1111010101 11101110 010001 011101 1100111 1010101 0101010100 1 110 1101001 111011 110101 1111 111111 01110101 101101 101111 1111011 11111100 111101 111101 11101101 101111 101111 110111 010100 010101001 110101 0101001 01010101 11010101 101101 110101 10110100 101111101 1101001 111101 1110101 11010101 110111 1011 1 1010 10010001001 1111011101 0101000101 1100110111 1111010101 1101010101 1011010101 0111010101 01110101010 11001101 11110101010 1111110101 110100101110 01011101 1100110 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 4,238 |
Words | 758 |
Sentences | 23 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 42, 32, 34, 17 |
Lines Amount | 125 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 873 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 190 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 20, 2023
- 3:50 min read
- 534 Views
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"Meditations In Time Of Civil War" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/39383/meditations-in-time-of-civil-war>.
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