Aedh Tells of the Perfect Beauty
O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyesThe poets labouring all their daysTo build a perfect beauty in rhymeAre overthrown by a woman's gazeAnd by the unlabouring brood of the skies:And therefore my heart will bow, when dewIs dropping sleep, until God burn time,Before the unlabouring stars and you.
Words in this poem
- labouring a.
- That labors; performing labor; esp., performing coarse, heavy work, not requiring skill also, set apart for labor; as, laboring days.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Aedh Tells of the Perfect Beauty 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 Tells of the Perfect Beauty, in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32233, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wind-among-reeds/aedh-tells-of-the-perfect-beauty.html, id L04537.
Form and metre
Aedh Tells of the Perfect Beauty is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABCBADCD. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 77%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.1 syllables. 62% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 ABCBADCD eyesA · daysB · rhymeC · gazeB · skiesA · dewD · timeC · youD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes | 8 | ···/···· |
| The poets labouring all their days | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| To build a perfect beauty in rhyme | 9 | ···/·/˘·· |
| Are overthrown by a woman's gaze | 9 | ··˘/··/˘· |
| And by the unlabouring brood of the skies: | 11 | ··········· |
| And therefore my heart will bow, when dew | 9 | ········· |
| Is dropping sleep, until God burn time, | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| Before the unlabouring stars and you. | 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.