Two Songs of a Fool II
I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire,The speckled cat slept on my knee;We never thought to enquireWhere the brown hare might be,And whether the door were shut.Who knows how she drank the windStretched up on two legs from the mat,Before she had settled her mindTo drum with her heel and to leap:Had I but awakened from sleepAnd called her name she had heard,It may be, and had not stirred,That now, it may be, has foundThe horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.
Words in this poem
- drank n.
- Wild oats, or darnel grass. See Drake a plant. [Cf. 3d Drake.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Two Songs of a Fool II 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, Two Songs of a Fool II, in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32491, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wild-swans/two-songs-of-a-fool-ii.html, id L20038.
Form and metre
Two Songs of a Fool II is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is anapaestic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%).
See other poems in anapaestic 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-C-CDDEEFF fireA · kneeB · enquireA · beB · shut · windC · mat · mindC · leapD · sleepD · heardE · stirredE · foundF · houndF
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 anapaestic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire, | 11 | ·····/˘···/ |
| The speckled cat slept on my knee; | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| We never thought to enquire | 8 | ·/˘··˘/˘ |
| Where the brown hare might be, | 6 | ······ |
| And whether the door were shut. | 7 | ······· |
| Who knows how she drank the wind | 7 | ······· |
| Stretched up on two legs from the mat, | 8 | ········ |
| Before she had settled her mind | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| To drum with her heel and to leap: | 8 | ········ |
| Had I but awakened from sleep | 8 | ···˘/˘·· |
| And called her name she had heard, | 8 | ··˘····· |
| It may be, and had not stirred, | 8 | ·······˘ |
| That now, it may be, has found | 7 | ······· |
| The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound. | 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.