His Memories
We should be hidden from their eyes,Being but holy showsAnd bodies broken like a thornWhereon the bleak north blows,To think of buried HectorAnd that none living knows.
The women take so little stockIn what I do or sayThey’d sooner leave their cossetingTo hear a jackass bray;My arms are like the twisted thornAnd yet there beauty lay;
The first of all the tribe lay thereAnd did such pleasure take--She who had brought great Hector downAnd put all Troy to wreck--That she cried into this earStrike me if I shriek.
Words in this poem
- whereon adv.
- On which; -- used relatively; as, the earth whereon we live.
- jackass n.
- The male ass; a donkey. [2d jack + ass.]
- bray v. t.
- To pound, beat, rub, or grind small or fine. [OE. brayen, OF. breier, F. broyer to pound, grind, fr. OHG. brehhan to break. See Break.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
His Memories is in the public domain. This text is taken from The tower, Project Gutenberg ebook #72985; 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, His Memories, in The Tower (1928), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #72985, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-tower/his-memories.html, id L19986.
Form and metre
His Memories is 18 lines in 3 stanzas of 6 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
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-A-A eyes · showsA · thorn · blowsA · hector · knowsA
- 2 -A-A-A stock · sayA · cosseting · brayA · thorn · layA
- 3 A---A- thereA · take · down · wreck · earA · shriek
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 |
|---|---|---|
| We should be hidden from their eyes, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Being but holy shows | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| And bodies broken like a thorn | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Whereon the bleak north blows, | 6 | ˘/···· |
| To think of buried Hector | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| And that none living knows. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The women take so little stock | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| In what I do or say | 6 | ······ |
| They’d sooner leave their cosseting | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| To hear a jackass bray; | 6 | ···/·· |
| My arms are like the twisted thorn | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And yet there beauty lay; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The first of all the tribe lay there | 8 | ········ |
| And did such pleasure take-- | 6 | ···/˘· |
| She who had brought great Hector down | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And put all Troy to wreck-- | 6 | ······ |
| That she cried into this ear | 7 | ······· |
| Strike me if I shriek. | 5 | ····· |
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.