All Things Can Tempt Me
All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:One time it was a woman's face, or worse--The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;Now nothing but comes readier to the handThan this accustomed toil. When I was young,I had not given a penny for a songDid not the poet sing it with such airsThat one believed he had a sword upstairs;Yet would be now, could I but have my wish,Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish.
Words in this poem
- craft n.
- Strength; might; secret power. [AS. cr strength, skill, art, cunning; akin to OS., G., Sw., & Dan. kraft strength, D. kracht, Icel. kraptr; perh. originally, a drawing together, stretching, fr]
- needs adv.
- Of necessity; necessarily; indispensably; -- often with must, and equivalent to of need. [Orig. gen. of need, used as an adverb. Cf. - wards.]
- upstairs adv.
- Up the stairs; in or toward an upper story.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
All Things Can Tempt Me is in the public domain. This text is taken from Responsibilities, and other poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #36865; 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, All Things Can Tempt Me, in Responsibilities (1914), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36865, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-responsibilities/all-things-can-tempt-me.html, id L04600.
Form and metre
All Things Can Tempt Me is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 80% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 30% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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.
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 AABB--CCDD verseA · worseA · landB · handB · young · song · airsC · upstairsC · wishD · fishD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: | 10 | ·········· |
| One time it was a woman's face, or worse-- | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| The seeming needs of my fool-driven land; | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Now nothing but comes readier to the hand | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Than this accustomed toil. When I was young, | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
| I had not given a penny for a song | 10 | ···/·/˘··· |
| Did not the poet sing it with such airs | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| That one believed he had a sword upstairs; | 10 | ··˘/····˘/ |
| Yet would be now, could I but have my wish, | 10 | ·········· |
| Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish. | 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.