Hanrahan Speaks to the Lovers of His Songs in Coming Days
O, colleens, kneeling by your altar rails long hence,When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet airAnd covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense;Bend down and pray for the great sin I wove in song,Till Maurya of the wounded heart cry a sweet cry,And call to my beloved and me: 'No longer fly'Amid the hovering, piteous, penitential throng.'
Words in this poem
- wove
- p. pr. & rare vb. n. of Weave.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Hanrahan Speaks to the Lovers of His Songs in Coming Days 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, Hanrahan Speaks to the Lovers of His Songs in Coming Days, in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32233, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wind-among-reeds/hanrahan-speaks-to-the-lovers-of-his-songs-in-coming-days.html, id L04545.
Form and metre
Hanrahan Speaks to the Lovers of His Songs in Coming Days is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. The metre is iambic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 12.1 syllables. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in iambic hexameter.
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 ABBACDDC henceA · prayerB · airB · frankincenseA · songC · cryD · flyD · throngC
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 hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O, colleens, kneeling by your altar rails long hence, | 12 | ··//˘··/˘··· |
| When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer, | 11 | ······˘/··· |
| And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air | 12 | ·········/˘· |
| And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense; | 13 | ·/˘˘/·····/˘· |
| Bend down and pray for the great sin I wove in song, | 12 | ············ |
| Till Maurya of the wounded heart cry a sweet cry, | 12 | ·····/˘····· |
| And call to my beloved and me: 'No longer fly | 12 | ····˘/···/˘· |
| 'Amid the hovering, piteous, penitential throng.' | 13 | ˘/·/˘/˘˘····· |
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.