Oona
Tell them to walk upon the floor of peace,That I would die and go to her I love;The years like great black oxen tread the world,And God the herdsman goads them on behind,And I am broken by their passing feet.Findrinny (Findruine).--A kind of white bronze.
About this text
Oona 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, Oona, in Poems (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38877, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-poems/oona-5.html, id L16714.
Form and metre
Oona is 6 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in iambic pentameter, other poems in blank verse.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Tell them to walk upon the floor of peace, | 10 | ·········· |
| That I would die and go to her I love; | 10 | ·········· |
| The years like great black oxen tread the world, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And God the herdsman goads them on behind, | 10 | ·········· |
| And I am broken by their passing feet. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Findrinny (Findruine).--A kind of white bronze. | 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.