The Pity of Love
A pity beyond all tellingIs hid in the heart of love:The folk who are buying and sellingThe clouds on their journey aboveThe cold wet winds ever blowingAnd the shadowy hazel groveWhere mouse-gray waters are flowingThreaten the head that I love.
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
The Pity of 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 Pity of Love, in Poems (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38877, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-poems/the-pity-of-love.html, id L16655.
Form and metre
The Pity of Love is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 74%). 76% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.9 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 75% 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 ABABC-CB tellingA · loveB · sellingA · aboveB · blowingC · grove · flowingC · loveB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A pity beyond all telling | 8 | ·/˘···/˘ |
| Is hid in the heart of love: | 7 | ······· |
| The folk who are buying and selling | 9 | ····/˘·/˘ |
| The clouds on their journey above | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| The cold wet winds ever blowing | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| And the shadowy hazel grove | 8 | ··/˘˘/˘· |
| Where mouse-gray waters are flowing | 8 | ···/˘·/˘ |
| Threaten the head that I love. | 7 | /˘····· |
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.