Aedh Tells of the Rose in His Heart
All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of goldFor my dreams of your image that blossomsa rose in the deeps of my heart.
Words in this poem
- roadway n.
- A road; especially, the part traveled by carriages.
- creak v. i.
- To make a prolonged sharp grating or ssqueaking sound, as by the friction of hard substances; as, shoes creak. [OE. creken, prob. of imitative origin; cf. E. crack, and. D. kreiken to crackle, chirp.]
- lumbering n.
- The business of cutting or getting timber or logs from the forest for lumber. [U.S.]
- ploughman n.
- One who plows, or who holds and guides a plow; hence, a husbandman. Chaucer.
- wintry a.
- Suitable to winter; resembling winter, or what belongs to winter; brumal; hyemal; cold; stormy; wintery. [AS. wintrig.]
- mould n.
- Crumbling, soft, friable earth; esp., earth containing the remains or constituents of organic matter, and suited to the growth of plants; soil. [OE. molde, AS. molde; akin to D. mul, G. mull, mulm, OHG. molt, molta, Icel. mold, Dan. muld, Sw. mull, Goth. mulda, and E. meal flour. See Meal, and cf. Mole a]
- casket v. t.
- To put into, or preserve in, a casket.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Aedh Tells of the Rose in His Heart 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 Rose in His Heart, 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-rose-in-his-heart.html, id L04516.
Form and metre
Aedh Tells of the Rose in His Heart is 9 lines in 2 stanzas. 79% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 14.3 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 22% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 oldA · cartB · mouldA · heartB
- 2 ABA-B toldA · apartB · goldA · blossoms · heartB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, | 14 | ··˘/˘·/˘······ |
| The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, | 16 | ·······/·····/˘· |
| The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould, | 14 | ·/˘·····/˘·/˘· |
| Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart. | 17 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘········ |
| The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; | 16 | ················ |
| I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart, | 16 | ·/˘···˘/······˘/ |
| With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold | 18 | ········/˘˘/··/˘·· |
| For my dreams of your image that blossoms | 10 | ·····/˘·/˘ |
| a rose in the deeps of my heart. | 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.