The Living Beauty
I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content--Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent--From beauty that is cast out of a mouldIn bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,Appears, and when we have gone is gone again,Being more indifferent to our solitudeThan 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old,The living beauty is for younger men,We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.
Words in this poem
- maybe adv.
- Perhaps; possibly; peradventure. [For it may be.]
- mould n.
- Crumbling, soft, friable earth; esp., earth containing the remains or constituents of organic matter, and suited to the growth of plants; soil. [OE. molde, AS. molde; akin to D. mul, G. mull, mulm, OHG. molt, molta, Icel. mold, Dan. muld, Sw. mull, Goth. mulda, and E. meal flour. See Meal, and cf. Mole a]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Living Beauty 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 Living Beauty, in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32491, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wild-swans/the-living-beauty.html, id L20005.
Form and metre
The Living Beauty is 10 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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-ABCD-BDC contentA · blood · spentA · mouldB · appearsC · againD · solitude · oldB · menD · tearsC
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content-- | 11 | ···/˘····/˘ |
| Seeing that time has frozen up the blood, | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent-- | 10 | ····/····· |
| From beauty that is cast out of a mould | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears, | 11 | ·····/˘/˘˘/ |
| Appears, and when we have gone is gone again, | 11 | ˘/·······˘/ |
| Being more indifferent to our solitude | 10 | /·˘/˘·//˘· |
| Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old, | 12 | ····˘/˘····· |
| The living beauty is for younger men, | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears. | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
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.