His Wildness
O bid me mount and sail up thereAmid the cloudy wrack,For Peg and Meg and Paris’ loveThat had so straight a back,Are gone away, and some that stay,Have changed their silk for sack.
Were I but there and none to hearI’d have a peacock cryFor that is natural to a manThat lives in memory,Being all alone I’d nurse a stoneAnd sing it lullaby.
Words in this poem
- amid prep.
- In the midst or middle of; surrounded or encompassed by; among. [OE. amidde, amiddes, on midden, AS. on middan, in the middle, fr. midde the middle. The s is an adverbial ending, originally marking the genitive; the t is a la]
- wrack n.
- Wreck; ruin; destruction. [OE. wrak wreck. See Wreck.]
- lullaby n.
- A song to quiet babes or lull them to sleep; that which quiets. [From Lull, v. t.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
His Wildness 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 Wildness, in The Tower (1928), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #72985, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-tower/his-wildness.html, id L19990.
Form and metre
His Wildness is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 there · wrackA · love · backA · stay · sackA
- 2 -A---A hear · cryA · man · memory · stone · lullabyA
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O bid me mount and sail up there | 8 | ········ |
| Amid the cloudy wrack, | 6 | ˘/·/˘· |
| For Peg and Meg and Paris’ love | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| That had so straight a back, | 6 | ······ |
| Are gone away, and some that stay, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| Have changed their silk for sack. | 6 | ······ |
| Were I but there and none to hear | 8 | ········ |
| I’d have a peacock cry | 6 | ···/·· |
| For that is natural to a man | 9 | ···/˘˘··· |
| That lives in memory, | 6 | ···/˘˘ |
| Being all alone I’d nurse a stone | 9 | /˘·˘/···· |
| And sing it lullaby. | 6 | ···/˘· |
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.