The Indian to His Love
The island dreams under the dawnAnd great boughs drop tranquillity;The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,A parrot sways upon a tree,Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.
Here we will moor our lonely shipAnd wander ever with woven hands,Murmuring softly lip to lip,Along the grass, along the sands,Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:
How we alone of mortals areHid under quiet bows apart,While our love grows an Indian star,A meteor of the burning heart,One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam and dart,
The heavy boughs, the burnished doveThat moans and sighs a hundred days:How when we die our shades will rove,When eve has hushed the feathered ways,With vapoury footsole among the water's drowsy blaze.
Words in this poem
- unquiet v. t.
- To disquiet. Ld. Herbert. [1st pref. un- + quiet.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Indian to His Love 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 Indian to His Love, in Poems (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38877, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-poems/the-indian-to-his-love.html, id L16686.
Form and metre
The Indian to His Love is 20 lines in 4 stanzas of 5 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABABB, complete in 3 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 83% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.5 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 20% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic 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 A-ABB dawnA · tranquillity · lawnA · treeB · seaB
- 2 ABABB shipA · handsB · lipA · sandsB · landsB
- 3 ABABB areA · apartB · starA · heartB · dartB
- 4 ABABB doveA · daysB · roveA · waysB · blazeB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The island dreams under the dawn | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| And great boughs drop tranquillity; | 8 | ····˘/˘˘ |
| The peahens dance on a smooth lawn, | 8 | ········ |
| A parrot sways upon a tree, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea. | 13 | /˘···/˘··˘/˘· |
| Here we will moor our lonely ship | 8 | ····//˘· |
| And wander ever with woven hands, | 8 | ·/˘/·/˘· |
| Murmuring softly lip to lip, | 8 | /˘˘/˘··· |
| Along the grass, along the sands, | 8 | ˘/··˘/·· |
| Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands: | 12 | /˘··˘/··˘/˘· |
| How we alone of mortals are | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| Hid under quiet bows apart, | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| While our love grows an Indian star, | 8 | ·/···/˘· |
| A meteor of the burning heart, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam and dart, | 12 | ············ |
| The heavy boughs, the burnished dove | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| That moans and sighs a hundred days: | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| How when we die our shades will rove, | 8 | ····/··· |
| When eve has hushed the feathered ways, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| With vapoury footsole among the water's drowsy blaze. | 15 | ··········/˘/˘· |
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.