The Travail of Passion
When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide;When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay;Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the wayCrowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side,The hyssop-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kidron stream:We will bend down and loosen our hair over you,That it may drop faint perfume, and be heavy with dew,Lilies of death-pale hope, roses of passionate dream.
Words in this poem
- scourge n.
- A lash; a strap or cord; especially, a lash used to inflict pain or punishment; an instrument of punishment or discipline; a whip. [F. escourgée, fr. L. excoriata (sc. scutica) a stripped off (lash or whip), fr. excoriate to strip, to skin. See Excoriate.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Travail of Passion 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 Travail of Passion, in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32233, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wind-among-reeds/the-travail-of-passion.html, id L04543.
Form and metre
The Travail of Passion 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 82%). 77% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 12.1 syllables. 12% 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 wideA · clayB · wayB · sideA · streamC · youD · dewD · dreamC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide; | 12 | ··/˘···/˘··· |
| When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay; | 12 | ··˘/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way | 12 | /·˘/···/˘··· |
| Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side, | 13 | /˘·/˘/˘······ |
| The hyssop-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kidron stream: | 12 | ·/˘/˘··/···· |
| We will bend down and loosen our hair over you, | 11 | ·····/˘/··· |
| That it may drop faint perfume, and be heavy with dew, | 13 | ·····˘/··/˘·· |
| Lilies of death-pale hope, roses of passionate dream. | 12 | /˘····/˘·/˘· |
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.