Analysis of He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead
William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)
WERE you but lying cold and dead,
And lights were paling out of the West,
You would come hither, and bend your head,
And I would lay my head on your breast;
And you would murmur tender words,
Forgiving me, because you were dead:
Nor would you rise and hasten away,
Though you have the will of the wild birds,
But know your hair was bound and wound
About the stars and moon and sun:
O would, beloved, that you lay
Under the dock-leaves in the ground,
While lights were paling one by one.
Scheme | ABABCADCEFDEF |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01110101 01011101 111100111 011111111 01110101 010101101 111101001 111011011 11111101 01010101 1101111 10011001 1101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 482 |
Words | 96 |
Sentences | 2 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 13 |
Lines Amount | 13 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 377 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 94 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 09, 2023
- 28 sec read
- 424 Views
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"He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/39349/he-wishes-his-beloved-were-dead>.
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