Bridget
She is the child of gentle people; lookAt her white hands and at her pretty dress.I've brought you some new milk, but wait a whileAnd I will put it to the fire to warm,For things well fitted for poor folk like usWould never please a high-born child like you.
Words in this poem
- folk n.
- In Anglo-Saxon times, the people of a group of townships or villages; a community; a tribe. [AS. folc; akin to D. volk, OS. & OHG. folk, G. volk, Icel. f, Sw. & Dan. folk, Lith. pulkas crowd, and perh. to E. follow.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Bridget 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, Bridget, in Poems (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38877, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-poems/bridget-2.html, id L16673.
Form and metre
Bridget is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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- look · dressA · while · warm · usA · you
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| She is the child of gentle people; look | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| At her white hands and at her pretty dress. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| I've brought you some new milk, but wait a while | 10 | ·········· |
| And I will put it to the fire to warm, | 10 | ·······/·· |
| For things well fitted for poor folk like us | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Would never please a high-born child like you. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
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.