A Deep-Sworn Vow
Others because you did not keepThat deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;Yet always when I look death in the face,When I clamber to the heights of sleep,Or when I grow excited with wine,Suddenly I meet your face.
Words in this poem
- clamber v. i.
- To climb with difficulty, or with hands and feet; -- also used figuratively. [OE clambren, clameren, to heap together, climb; akin to Icel. klambra to clamp, G. klammern. Cf. Clamp, Climb.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Deep-Sworn Vow is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Wild Swans at Coole, Project Gutenberg ebook #32491; 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, A Deep-Sworn Vow, in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32491, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wild-swans/a-deep-sworn-vow.html, id L20021.
Form and metre
A Deep-Sworn Vow is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABCABC. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%).
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 ABCABC keepA · mineB · faceC · sleepA · wineB · faceC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Others because you did not keep | 8 | /˘······ |
| That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine; | 9 | ········· |
| Yet always when I look death in the face, | 10 | ·/········ |
| When I clamber to the heights of sleep, | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| Or when I grow excited with wine, | 9 | ····˘/˘·· |
| Suddenly I meet your face. | 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.