A Faery Song
We who are old, old and gay,O so old!Thousands of years, thousands of years,If all were told:
Give to these children, new from the world,Silence and love;And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,And the stars above:
Give to these children, new from the world,Rest far from men.Is anything better, anything better?Tell us it then:
Us who are old, old and gay,O so old!Thousands of years, thousands of years,If all were told.
About this text
A Faery Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #38877; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: W. B. Yeats, A Faery Song, in Poems (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38877, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-poems/a-faery-song.html, id L16652.
Form and metre
A Faery Song is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.2 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic dimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -A-A gay · oldA · years · toldA
- 2 -A-A world · loveA · night · aboveA
- 3 -A-A world · menA · better · thenA
- 4 -A-A gay · oldA · years · toldA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| We who are old, old and gay, | 7 | ······· |
| O so old! | 3 | ··· |
| Thousands of years, thousands of years, | 8 | /˘··/˘·· |
| If all were told: | 4 | ···· |
| Give to these children, new from the world, | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Silence and love; | 4 | /˘·· |
| And the long dew-dropping hours of the night, | 10 | ····/˘/··· |
| And the stars above: | 5 | ····· |
| Give to these children, new from the world, | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Rest far from men. | 4 | ···· |
| Is anything better, anything better? | 11 | ·/˘·/˘/˘·/˘ |
| Tell us it then: | 4 | ···· |
| Us who are old, old and gay, | 7 | ······· |
| O so old! | 3 | ··· |
| Thousands of years, thousands of years, | 8 | /˘··/˘·· |
| If all were told. | 4 | ···· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.