Analysis of Never Give All The Heart

William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)



NEVER give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy.  Kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.


Scheme AABBCDEEFFGAHI
Poetic Form
Metre 10110111 11011101 110010111 1001101 11111111 1101101 10110101 11010111 11111111 110111101 01111101 11010111 11111101 11111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 488
Words 98
Sentences 6
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 383
Words per stanza (avg) 97
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

29 sec read
190

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. more…

All William Butler Yeats poems | William Butler Yeats Books

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