Hush!
Lay all the bags of money in a heap,And when I am gone, old Oona, share them outTo every man and woman: judge, and giveAccording to their needs.
Words in this poem
- needs adv.
- Of necessity; necessarily; indispensably; -- often with must, and equivalent to of need. [Orig. gen. of need, used as an adverb. Cf. - wards.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Hush! 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, Hush!, in Poems (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38877, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-poems/hush-2.html, id L16642.
Form and metre
Hush! is 4 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.2 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Lay all the bags of money in a heap, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And when I am gone, old Oona, share them out | 11 | ······/˘··· |
| To every man and woman: judge, and give | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| According to their needs. | 6 | ˘/˘··· |
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.