Analysis of To Songs Of A Fool
William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)
I
A SPECKLED cat and a tame hare
Eat at my hearthstone
And sleep there;
And both look up to me alone
For learning and defence
As I look up to providence.
I start out of my sleep to think
Some day I may forget
Their food and drink;
Or, the house door left unshut,
The hare may run till it's found
The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.
I bear a burden that might well try
Men that do all by rule,
And what can I
That am a wandering-witted fool
But pray to God that He ease
My great responsibilities?
I slept on my three-legged stool by thc fire.
The speckled cat slept on my knee;
We never thought to enquire
Where the brown hare might be,
And whether the door were shut.
Who knows how she drank the wind
Stretched up on two legs from the mat,
Before she had settled her mind
To drum with her heel and to leap?
Had I but awakened from sleep
And called her name, she had heard.
It may be, and had not stirred,
That now, it may be, has found
The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.
ANOTHER SONG OF A FOOL
THIS great purple butterfly,
In the prison of my hands,
Has a learning in his eye
Not a poor fool understands.
Once he lived a schoolmaster
With a stark, denying look;
A string of scholars went in fear
Of his great birch and his great book.
Like the clangour of a bell,
Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet.
That is how he learnt so well
To take the roses for his meat.
Scheme | abcbcxxdedefFagaghhicixxjxjkkllfF g amaminxnopop |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1 01010011 1111 011 01111101 110001 11111100 11111111 111101 1101 101111 0111111 0111001101 110101111 111111 0111 110100101 1111111 1100100 111111011110 01011111 11011010 101111 0100101 1111101 11111101 01111001 11101011 11101011 0101111 1110111 1111111 0111001101 0101101 111010 0010111 1010011 101101 111010 1010101 01110101 11110111 101101 101101 1111111 11010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,351 |
Words | 283 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 33, 1, 12 |
Lines Amount | 46 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 357 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 94 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 03, 2023
- 1:25 min read
- 92 Views
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"To Songs Of A Fool" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/39602/to-songs-of-a-fool>.
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