A Thought from Propertius
She might, so noble from headTo great shapely knees,The long flowing line,Have walked to the altarThrough the holy imagesAt Pallas Athene's side,Or been fit spoil for a centaurDrunk with the unmixed wine.
Words in this poem
- shapely a.
- Well-formed; having a regular shape; comely; symmetrical. T.
- pallas n.
- Pallas Athene, the Grecian goddess of wisdom, called also Athene, and identified, at a later period, with the Roman Minerva.
- centaur n.
- A fabulous being, represented as half man and half horse.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Thought from Propertius 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 Thought from Propertius, in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32491, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wild-swans/a-thought-from-propertius.html, id L20019.
Form and metre
A Thought from Propertius is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 76%).
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 -AB-A--B head · kneesA · lineB · altar · imagesA · side · centaur · wineB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| She might, so noble from head | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| To great shapely knees, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| The long flowing line, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Have walked to the altar | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Through the holy images | 7 | ··/˘/˘˘ |
| At Pallas Athene's side, | 6 | ······ |
| Or been fit spoil for a centaur | 8 | ······/· |
| Drunk with the unmixed wine. | 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.