Aedh Laments the Loss of Love
Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,I had a beautiful friendAnd dreamed that the old despairWould end in love in the end:She looked in my heart one dayAnd saw your image was there;She has gone weeping away.
About this text
Aedh Laments the Loss of Love 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 Laments the Loss of Love, in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32233, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wind-among-reeds/aedh-laments-the-loss-of-love.html, id L04525.
Form and metre
Aedh Laments the Loss of Love is 7 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCAC. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 77%). 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.3 syllables.
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 ABABCAC hairA · friendB · despairA · endB · dayC · thereA · awayC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, | 7 | ······· |
| I had a beautiful friend | 7 | ···/˘˘· |
| And dreamed that the old despair | 8 | ··˘···˘/ |
| Would end in love in the end: | 7 | ······· |
| She looked in my heart one day | 8 | ··˘····· |
| And saw your image was there; | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| She has gone weeping away. | 7 | ···/˘˘/ |
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.