The Falling of the Leaves
Autumn is over the long leaves that love us,And over the mice in the barley sheaves;Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.
The hour of the waning of love has beset us,And weary and worn are our sad souls now;Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.
Words in this poem
- waning n.
- The act or process of waning, or decreasing.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Falling of the Leaves 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, The Falling of the Leaves, in Poems (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38877, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-poems/the-falling-of-the-leaves.html, id L16687.
Form and metre
The Falling of the Leaves is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is dactylic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%). 86% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.9 syllables.
See other poems in dactylic tetrameter.
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 ABAB usA · sheavesB · usA · leavesB
- 2 ABAB usA · nowB · usA · browB
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 dactylic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Autumn is over the long leaves that love us, | 10 | /˘········ |
| And over the mice in the barley sheaves; | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us, | 11 | /˘····/˘··· |
| And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves. | 10 | ·/˘···/·˘· |
| The hour of the waning of love has beset us, | 12 | ·/··/˘···˘/· |
| And weary and worn are our sad souls now; | 10 | ·/˘···/··· |
| Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us, | 13 | ·····/˘·/˘˘/· |
| With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow. | 11 | ········/˘· |
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.