Aedh Thinks of Those Who Have Spoken Evil of His Beloved
Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,And dream about the great and their pride;They have spoken against you everywhere,But weigh this song with the great and their pride;I made it out of a mouthful of air,Their children's children shall say they have lied.
Words in this poem
- mouthful n.
- As much as is usually put into the mouth at one time.
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- lied n.
- A lay; a German song. It differs from the French chanson, and the Italian canzone, all three being national. [G.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Aedh Thinks of Those Who Have Spoken Evil of His Beloved 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 Thinks of Those Who Have Spoken Evil of His Beloved, in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32233, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wind-among-reeds/aedh-thinks-of-those-who-have-spoken-evil-of-his-beloved.html, id L04539.
Form and metre
Aedh Thinks of Those Who Have Spoken Evil of His Beloved is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABAB. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 76%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.7 syllables.
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 ABABAB hairA · prideB · everywhereA · prideB · airA · liedB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair, | 9 | ···/·/˘·· |
| And dream about the great and their pride; | 9 | ········· |
| They have spoken against you everywhere, | 10 | ··/˘···/˘· |
| But weigh this song with the great and their pride; | 10 | ·········· |
| I made it out of a mouthful of air, | 10 | ······/··· |
| Their children's children shall say they have lied. | 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.