To a Squirrel at Kyle-Na-Gno
Come play with me;Why should you runThrough the shaking treeAs though I'd a gunTo strike you dead?When all I would doIs to scratch your headAnd let you go.
About this text
To a Squirrel at Kyle-Na-Gno 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, To a Squirrel at Kyle-Na-Gno, in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32491, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wild-swans/to-a-squirrel-at-kyle-na-gno.html, id L20024.
Form and metre
To a Squirrel at Kyle-Na-Gno is 8 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 ABABC-C- meA · runB · treeA · gunB · deadC · do · headC · go
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Come play with me; | 4 | ···· |
| Why should you run | 4 | ···· |
| Through the shaking tree | 5 | ··/˘· |
| As though I'd a gun | 5 | ····· |
| To strike you dead? | 4 | ···· |
| When all I would do | 5 | ····· |
| Is to scratch your head | 5 | ····· |
| And let you go. | 4 | ···· |
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.