Breasal the Fisherman
Although you hide in the ebb and flowOf the pale tide when the moon has set,The people of coming days will knowAbout the casting out of my net,And how you have leaped times out of mindOver the little silver cords,And think that you were hard and unkind,And blame you with many bitter words.
Words in this poem
- unkind a.
- Having no race or kindred; childless. [See Kin kindred.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Breasal the Fisherman 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, Breasal the Fisherman, in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32233, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wind-among-reeds/breasal-the-fisherman.html, id L04518.
Form and metre
Breasal the Fisherman is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.8 syllables. 38% 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 ABABC-C- flowA · setB · knowA · netB · mindC · cords · unkindC · words
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Although you hide in the ebb and flow | 9 | ········· |
| Of the pale tide when the moon has set, | 9 | ········· |
| The people of coming days will know | 9 | ·/˘·/˘··· |
| About the casting out of my net, | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| And how you have leaped times out of mind | 9 | ········· |
| Over the little silver cords, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| And think that you were hard and unkind, | 9 | ·······˘/ |
| And blame you with many bitter words. | 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.