Aedh Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes
Fasten your hair with a golden pin,And bind up every wandering tress;I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:It worked at them, day out, day in,Building a sorrowful lovelinessOut of the battles of old times.
You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,And bind up your long hair and sigh;And all men's hearts must burn and beat;And candle-like foam on the dim sand,And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,Live but to light your passing feet.
Words in this poem
- tress n.
- A braid, knot, or curl, of hair; a ringlet. [OE. tresse, OF. trece, F. tresse, LL. tricia, fr. Gr. tri`cha threefold, because a tress is usually formed by interlacing three pieces; akin to trei^s three. Se]
- bade
- A form of the pat tense of Bid.
- loveliness n.
- The state or quality of being lovely. [From Lovely.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Aedh Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Wind Among the Reeds, Project Gutenberg ebook #32233; 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, Aedh Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes, in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32233, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wind-among-reeds/aedh-gives-his-beloved-certain-rhymes.html, id L04531.
Form and metre
Aedh Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABCABC. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.3 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 8% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 ABCABC pinA · tressB · rhymesC · inA · lovelinessB · timesC
- 2 ABCABC handA · sighB · beatC · sandA · skyB · feetC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Fasten your hair with a golden pin, | 9 | /˘····/˘· |
| And bind up every wandering tress; | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| I bade my heart build these poor rhymes: | 8 | ········ |
| It worked at them, day out, day in, | 8 | ········ |
| Building a sorrowful loveliness | 9 | /˘·/˘˘/˘˘ |
| Out of the battles of old times. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| You need but lift a pearl-pale hand, | 8 | ········ |
| And bind up your long hair and sigh; | 8 | ········ |
| And all men's hearts must burn and beat; | 8 | ········ |
| And candle-like foam on the dim sand, | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky, | 9 | ··/˘··/˘· |
| Live but to light your passing feet. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
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.