The End of Day
She is playing like a childAnd penance is the play,Fantastical and wildBecause the end of dayShows her that some one soonWill come from the house, and say--Though play is but half-done--'Come in and leave the play.'--
Words in this poem
- fantastical a.
- Fanciful; unreal; whimsical; capricious; fantastic.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The End of Day 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 End of Day, in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32491, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wild-swans/the-end-of-day.html, id L20030.
Form and metre
The End of Day is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
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 ABAB-B-B childA · playB · wildA · dayB · soon · sayB · done · playB
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 is playing like a child | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| And penance is the play, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Fantastical and wild | 6 | ˘/˘˘·· |
| Because the end of day | 6 | ······ |
| Shows her that some one soon | 6 | ······ |
| Will come from the house, and say-- | 7 | ······· |
| Though play is but half-done-- | 6 | ······ |
| 'Come in and leave the play.'-- | 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.