The Dawn
I would be ignorant as the dawnThat has looked downOn that old queen measuring a townWith the pin of a brooch,Or on the withered men that sawFrom their pedantic BabylonThe careless planets in their courses,The stars fade out where the moon comes,And took their tablets and did sums;I would be ignorant as the dawnThat merely stood, rocking the glittering coachAbove the cloudy shoulders of the horses;I would be--for no knowledge is worth a straw--Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.
About this text
The Dawn 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, The Dawn, in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32491, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wild-swans/the-dawn.html, id L20011.
Form and metre
The Dawn is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%).
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 ABBCD-EFFACEDA dawnA · downB · townB · broochC · sawD · babylon · coursesE · comesF · sumsF · dawnA · coachC · horsesE · strawD · dawnA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I would be ignorant as the dawn | 9 | ···/˘˘··· |
| That has looked down | 4 | ···· |
| On that old queen measuring a town | 9 | ····/˘˘·· |
| With the pin of a brooch, | 6 | ······ |
| Or on the withered men that saw | 9 | ···/˘˘··· |
| From their pedantic Babylon | 8 | ··˘/˘/˘· |
| The careless planets in their courses, | 9 | ·/˘/˘··/˘ |
| The stars fade out where the moon comes, | 8 | ········ |
| And took their tablets and did sums; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| I would be ignorant as the dawn | 9 | ···/˘˘··· |
| That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach | 10 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘· |
| Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses; | 11 | ···/˘/˘··/˘ |
| I would be--for no knowledge is worth a straw-- | 11 | ·····/˘···· |
| Ignorant and wanton as the dawn. | 9 | /˘˘·/˘··· |
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.