Analysis of Two Songs From a Play
William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)
I saw a staring virgin stand
Where holy Dionysus died,
And tear the heart out of his side.
And lay the heart upon her hand
And bear that beating heart away;
Of Magnus Annus at the spring,
As though God's death were but a play.
Another Troy must rise and set,
Another lineage feed the crow,
Another Argo's painted prow
Drive to a flashier bauble yet.
The Roman Empire stood appalled:
It dropped the reins of peace and war
When that fierce virgin and her Star
Out of the fabulous darkness called.
In pity for man's darkening thought
He walked that room and issued thence
In Galilean turbulence;
The Babylonian starlight brought
A fabulous, formless darkness in;
Odour of blood when Christ was slain
Made all platonic tolerance vain
And vain all Doric discipline.
Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.
Love's pleasure drives his love away,
The painter's brush consumes his dreams;
The herald's cry, the soldier's tread
Exhaust his glory and his might:
Whatever flames upon the night
Man's own resinous heart has fed.
Scheme | ABBACXC DXXDEXXE FGXFXHHX GCCXIJJI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11010101 11011 01011111 01010101 01110101 1101101 11110101 01011101 010100101 01010101 110100101 010100101 11011101 11110001 110100101 010111001 11110101 0010100 0010011 01001100 1111111 110101001 01110100 10111 01010101 11011101 01010111 01010101 01110011 1010101 111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,011 |
Words | 183 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 31 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 206 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 45 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 23, 2023
- 57 sec read
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