Into the Twilight
Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;Laugh heart again in the gray twilight,Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
Your mother Eire is always young,Dew ever shining and twilight gray;Though hope fall from you and love decay,Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.
Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:For there the mystical brotherhoodOf sun and moon and hollow and woodAnd river and stream work out their will;And God stands winding His lonely horn,And time and the world are ever in flight;And love is less kind than the gray twilight,And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.
Words in this poem
- morn n.
- The first part of the day; the morning; -- used chiefly in poetry. [OE. morwen, morgen, AS. morgen; akin to D. morgen, OS. morgan, G. morgen, Icel. morginn, morgunn, Sw. morgon, Dan. morgen, Goth. maúrgins. Cf. Morrow, Morning.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Into the Twilight 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, Into the Twilight, in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32233, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wind-among-reeds/into-the-twilight.html, id L04520.
Form and metre
Into the Twilight is 16 lines in 3 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is ABBA, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 74%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.0 syllables. 12% 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 ABBA wornA · rightB · twilightB · mornA
- 2 ABBA youngA · grayB · decayB · tongueA
- 3 ABBACDDC hillA · brotherhoodB · woodB · willA · hornC · flightD · twilightD · mornC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, | 8 | ········ |
| Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; | 9 | ········· |
| Laugh heart again in the gray twilight, | 9 | ··˘/···/· |
| Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn. | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| Your mother Eire is always young, | 8 | ·/˘··/·· |
| Dew ever shining and twilight gray; | 8 | ·//˘·/·· |
| Though hope fall from you and love decay, | 9 | ·······˘/ |
| Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue. | 9 | /˘·/··/˘· |
| Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill: | 9 | ········· |
| For there the mystical brotherhood | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Of sun and moon and hollow and wood | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| And river and stream work out their will; | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| And God stands winding His lonely horn, | 9 | ···/˘·/˘· |
| And time and the world are ever in flight; | 9 | ······/·· |
| And love is less kind than the gray twilight, | 10 | ········/· |
| And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn. | 11 | ··········· |
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.