The Mermaid
A mermaid found a swimming lad,Picked him for her own,Pressed her body to his body,Laughed; and plunging downForgot in cruel happinessThat even lovers drown.
Words in this poem
- mermaid n.
- A fabled marine creature, typically represented as having the upper part like that of a woman, and the lower like a fish; a sea nymph, sea woman, or woman fish. [AS. mere lake, sea. See Mere lake, and maid.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Mermaid 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, The Mermaid, in The Tower (1928), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #72985, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-tower/the-mermaid.html, id L19983.
Form and metre
The Mermaid is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
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 lad · own · body · downA · happiness · drownA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A mermaid found a swimming lad, | 8 | ·/···/˘· |
| Picked him for her own, | 5 | ····· |
| Pressed her body to his body, | 9 | ·˘·/˘··/˘ |
| Laughed; and plunging down | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Forgot in cruel happiness | 8 | ˘/·/˘/˘˘ |
| That even lovers drown. | 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.