Her Race
She has not grown uncivilAs narrow natures wouldAnd called the pleasures evilHappier days thought good;She knows herself a womanNo red and white of a face,Or rank, raised from a commonUnreckonable race;And how should her heart fail herOr sickness break her willWith her dead brother's valourFor an example still.
About this text
Her Race 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, Her Race, in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32491, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wild-swans/her-race.html, id L20031.
Form and metre
Her Race is 12 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
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-B-B-C-C uncivil · wouldA · evil · goodA · woman · faceB · common · raceB · her · willC · valour · stillC
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 has not grown uncivil | 7 | ····˘/˘ |
| As narrow natures would | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| And called the pleasures evil | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Happier days thought good; | 6 | /˘˘··· |
| She knows herself a woman | 7 | ··˘/·/˘ |
| No red and white of a face, | 7 | ······· |
| Or rank, raised from a common | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Unreckonable race; | 6 | ······ |
| And how should her heart fail her | 7 | ······· |
| Or sickness break her will | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| With her dead brother's valour | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| For an example still. | 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.