Analysis of The Seven Sages
William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)
The First. My great-grandfather spoke to Edmund Burke
In Grattan's house.
The Second. My great-grandfather shared
A pot-house bench with Oliver Goldsmith once.
The Third. My great-grandfather's father talked of music,
Drank tar-water with the Bishop of Cloyne.
The Fourth. But mine saw Stella once.
The Fifth. Whence came our thought?
The Sixth. From four great minds that hated Whiggery.
The Fifth. Burke was a Whig.
The Sixth. Whether they knew or not,
Goldsmith and Burke, Swift and the Bishop of Cloyne
All hated Whiggery; but what is Whiggery?
A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind
That never looked out of the eye of a saint
Or out of drunkard's eye.
The Seventh. All's Whiggery now,
But we old men are massed against the world.
The First. American colonies, Ireland, France and India
Harried, and Burke's great melody against it.
The Second. Oliver Goldsmith sang what he had seen,
Roads full of beggars, cattle in the fields,
But never saw the trefoil stained with blood,
The avenging leaf those fields raised up against it.
The Fourth. The tomb of Swift wears it away.
The Third. A voice
Soft as the rustle of a reed from Cloyne
That gathers volume; now a thunder-clap.
The Sixtb. What schooling had these four?
The Seventh. They walked the roads
Mimicking what they heard, as children mimic;
They understood that wisdom comes of beggary.
Scheme | ABCDEFDGHIJFHKLMFNOPFQRPSTFUHVEH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01111011101 011 01011101 0111110011 011110101110 1110101011 01111101 0111101 0111111101 011101 01101111 1011001011 11011111 01100100111 11011101101 11111 010111 1111110101 01010010010010100 10011100011 010100111111 1111010001 110101111 001011111011 0101111101 0101 1101010111 1101010101 01110111 0101101 10011111010 101110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,332 |
Words | 231 |
Sentences | 32 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 32 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,068 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 229 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 07, 2023
- 1:10 min read
- 148 Views
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