The Heart of the Woman
O what to me the little roomThat was brimmed up with prayer and rest;He bade me out into the gloom,And my breast lies upon his breast.
O what to me my mother's care,The house where I was safe and warm;The shadowy blossom of my hairWill hide us from the bitter storm.
O hiding hair and dewy eyes,I am no more with life and death,My heart upon his warm heart lies,My breath is mixed into his breath.
Words in this poem
- bade
- A form of the pat tense of Bid.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Heart of the Woman 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, The Heart of the Woman, in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32233, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wind-among-reeds/the-heart-of-the-woman.html, id L04524.
Form and metre
The Heart of the Woman is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 17% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 roomA · restB · gloomA · breastB
- 2 ABAB careA · warmB · hairA · stormB
- 3 ABAB eyesA · deathB · liesA · breathB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O what to me the little room | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| That was brimmed up with prayer and rest; | 8 | ········ |
| He bade me out into the gloom, | 8 | ········ |
| And my breast lies upon his breast. | 8 | ········ |
| O what to me my mother's care, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The house where I was safe and warm; | 8 | ········ |
| The shadowy blossom of my hair | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Will hide us from the bitter storm. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| O hiding hair and dewy eyes, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| I am no more with life and death, | 8 | ········ |
| My heart upon his warm heart lies, | 8 | ········ |
| My breath is mixed into his breath. | 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.