Meditations In Time Of Civil War Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDCDCEF GHGHGHII JKLKLKMM NANONOPQ RSRSTSUV M WFXWEXYZZA2 LB2C2D2E2C2F2TG2F2 H2NI2H2NI2J2SSJ2 E K2K2L2L2L2L2M2N2L2L2 L2L2O2O2P2Q2R2S2T2JK 2K2U2U2WV2O2O2W2W2X2 X2 L2 SL2SL2SL2I2Y2 WZ2WA3WB3C3C3 L2D3L2E3L2F3G3G3 V2 WJV2WT2 ZH3I3I3H3 J3K3L3I2K3 M3 L2N3L2L2O3 P3N3P3P3N3 Q3V2R3S3N3 L2N3L2L2N3 L2L2 LFT3FSC3SC3 U3L2V3L2W3KW3F L2L2L2L2FL2FL2 X3L2X3L2J2Y3J2T3 N3Z3N3E2L2A4L2A4| I Ancestral Houses | A |
| - | |
| Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns | B |
| Amid the rustle of his planted hills | C |
| Life overflows without ambitious pains | D |
| And rains down life until the basin spills | C |
| And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains | D |
| As though to choose whatever shape it wills | C |
| And never stoop to a mechanical | E |
| Or servile shape at others' beck and call | F |
| - | |
| Mere dreams mere dreams Yet Homer had not Sung | G |
| Had he not found it certain beyond dreams | H |
| That out of life's own self delight had sprung | G |
| The abounding glittering jet though now it seems | H |
| As if some marvellous empty sea shell flung | G |
| Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams | H |
| And not a fountain were the symbol which | I |
| Shadows the inherited glory of the rich | I |
| - | |
| Some violent bitter man some powerful man | J |
| Called architect and artist in that they | K |
| Bitter and violent men might rear in stone | L |
| The sweetness that all longed for night and day | K |
| The gentleness none there had ever known | L |
| But when the master's buried mice can play | K |
| And maybe the great grandson of that house | M |
| For all its bronze and marble 's but a mouse | M |
| - | |
| O what if gardens where the peacock strays | N |
| With delicate feet upon old terraces | A |
| Or else all Juno from an urn displays | N |
| Before the indifferent garden deities | O |
| O what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways | N |
| Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease | O |
| And Childhood a delight for every sense | P |
| But take our greatness with our violence | Q |
| - | |
| What if the glory of escutcheoned doors | R |
| And buildings that a haughtier age designed | S |
| The pacing to and fro on polished floors | R |
| Amid great chambers and long galleries lined | S |
| With famous portraits of our ancestors | T |
| What if those things the greatest of mankind | S |
| Consider most to magnify or to bless | U |
| But take our greatness with our bitterness | V |
| - | |
| - | |
| II My House | M |
| - | |
| An ancient bridge and a more ancient tower | W |
| A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall | F |
| An acre of stony ground | X |
| Where the symbolic rose can break in flower | W |
| Old ragged elms old thorns innumerable | E |
| The sound of the rain or sound | X |
| Of every wind that blows | Y |
| The stilted water hen | Z |
| Crossing Stream again | Z |
| Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows | A2 |
| - | |
| A winding stair a chamber arched with stone | L |
| A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth | B2 |
| A candle and written page | C2 |
| Il Penseroso's Platonist toiled on | D2 |
| In some like chamber shadowing forth | E2 |
| How the daemonic rage | C2 |
| Imagined everything | F2 |
| Benighted travellers | T |
| From markets and from fairs | G2 |
| Have seen his midnight candle glimmering | F2 |
| - | |
| Two men have founded here A man at arms | H2 |
| Gathered a score of horse and spent his days | N |
| In this tumultuous spot | I2 |
| Where through long wars and sudden night alarms | H2 |
| His dwinding score and he seemed castaways | N |
| Forgetting and forgot | I2 |
| And I that after me | J2 |
| My bodily heirs may find | S |
| To exalt a lonely mind | S |
| Befitting emblems of adversity | J2 |
| - | |
| - | |
| III My Table | E |
| - | |
| Two heavy trestles and a board | K2 |
| Where Sato's gift a changeless sword | K2 |
| By pen and paper lies | L2 |
| That it may moralise | L2 |
| My days out of their aimlessness | L2 |
| A bit of an embroidered dress | L2 |
| Covers its wooden sheath | M2 |
| Chaucer had not drawn breath | N2 |
| When it was forged In Sato's house | L2 |
| Curved like new moon moon luminous | L2 |
| It lay five hundred years | L2 |
| Yet if no change appears | L2 |
| No moon only an aching heart | O2 |
| Conceives a changeless work of art | O2 |
| Our learned men have urged | P2 |
| That when and where 'twas forged | Q2 |
| A marvellous accomplishment | R2 |
| In painting or in pottery went | S2 |
| From father unto son | T2 |
| And through the centuries ran | J |
| And seemed unchanging like the sword | K2 |
| Soul's beauty being most adored | K2 |
| Men and their business took | U2 |
| Me soul's unchanging look | U2 |
| For the most rich inheritor | W |
| Knowing that none could pass Heaven's door | V2 |
| That loved inferior art | O2 |
| Had such an aching heart | O2 |
| That he although a country's talk | W2 |
| For silken clothes and stately walk | W2 |
| Had waking wits it seemed | X2 |
| Juno's peacock screamed | X2 |
| - | |
| - | |
| IV My Descendants | L2 |
| - | |
| Having inherited a vigorous mind | S |
| From my old fathers I must nourish dreams | L2 |
| And leave a woman and a man behind | S |
| As vigorous of mind and yet it seems | L2 |
| Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind | S |
| Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams | L2 |
| But the torn petals strew the garden plot | I2 |
| And there's but common greenness after that | Y2 |
| - | |
| And what if my descendants lose the flower | W |
| Through natural declension of the soul | Z2 |
| Through too much business with the passing hour | W |
| Through too much play or marriage with a fool | A3 |
| May this laborious stair and this stark tower | W |
| Become a roofless min that the owl | B3 |
| May build in the cracked masonry and cry | C3 |
| Her desolation to the desolate sky | C3 |
| - | |
| The primum Mobile that fashioned us | L2 |
| Has made the very owls in circles move | D3 |
| And I that count myself most prosperous | L2 |
| Seeing that love and friendship are enough | E3 |
| For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house | L2 |
| And decked and altered it for a girl's love | F3 |
| And know whatever flourish and decline | G3 |
| These stones remain their monument and mine | G3 |
| - | |
| - | |
| V The Road at My Door | V2 |
| - | |
| An affable Irregular | W |
| A heavily built Falstaffian man | J |
| Comes cracking jokes of civil war | V2 |
| As though to die by gunshot were | W |
| The finest play under the sun | T2 |
| - | |
| A brown Lieutenant and his men | Z |
| Half dressed in national uniform | H3 |
| Stand at my door and I complain | I3 |
| Of the foul weather hail and rain | I3 |
| A pear tree broken by the storm | H3 |
| - | |
| I count those feathered balls of soot | J3 |
| The moor hen guides upon the stream | K3 |
| To silence the envy in my thought | L3 |
| And turn towards my chamber caught | I2 |
| In the cold snows of a dream | K3 |
| - | |
| - | |
| VI The Stare's Nest by My Window | M3 |
| - | |
| The bees build in the crevices | L2 |
| Of loosening masonry and there | N3 |
| The mother birds bring grubs and flies | L2 |
| My wall is loosening honey bees | L2 |
| Come build in the empty house of the state | O3 |
| - | |
| We are closed in and the key is turned | P3 |
| On our uncertainty somewhere | N3 |
| A man is killed or a house burned | P3 |
| Yet no clear fact to be discerned | P3 |
| Come build in he empty house of the stare | N3 |
| - | |
| A barricade of stone or of wood | Q3 |
| Some fourteen days of civil war | V2 |
| Last night they trundled down the road | R3 |
| That dead young soldier in his blood | S3 |
| Come build in the empty house of the stare | N3 |
| - | |
| We had fed the heart on fantasies | L2 |
| The heart's grown brutal from the fare | N3 |
| More Substance in our enmities | L2 |
| Than in our love O honey bees | L2 |
| Come build in the empty house of the stare | N3 |
| - | |
| - | |
| VII I see Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's | L2 |
| Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness | L2 |
| - | |
| I climb to the tower top and lean upon broken stone | L |
| A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all | F |
| Valley river and elms under the light of a moon | T3 |
| That seems unlike itself that seems unchangeable | F |
| A glittering sword out of the east A puff of wind | S |
| And those white glimmering fragments of the mist sweep by | C3 |
| Frenzies bewilder reveries perturb the mind | S |
| Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind's eye | C3 |
| - | |
| 'Vengeance upon the murderers ' the cry goes up | U3 |
| 'Vengeance for Jacques Molay ' In cloud pale rags or in lace | L2 |
| The rage driven rage tormented and rage hungry troop | V3 |
| Trooper belabouring trooper biting at arm or at face | L2 |
| Plunges towards nothing arms and fingers spreading wide | W3 |
| For the embrace of nothing and I my wits astray | K |
| Because of all that senseless tumult all but cried | W3 |
| For vengeance on the murderers of Jacques Molay | F |
| - | |
| Their legs long delicate and slender aquamarine their eyes | L2 |
| Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs | L2 |
| The ladies close their musing eyes No prophecies | L2 |
| Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs | L2 |
| Have closed the ladies' eyes their minds are but a pool | F |
| Where even longing drowns under its own excess | L2 |
| Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full | F |
| Of their own sweetness bodies of their loveliness | L2 |
| - | |
| The cloud pale unicorns the eyes of aquamarine | X3 |
| The quivering half closed eyelids the rags of cloud or of lace | L2 |
| Or eyes that rage has brightened arms it has made lean | X3 |
| Give place to an indifferent multitude give place | L2 |
| To brazen hawks Nor self delighting reverie | J2 |
| Nor hate of what's to come nor pity for what's gone | Y3 |
| Nothing but grip of claw and the eye's complacency | J2 |
| The innumerable clanging wings that have put out the moon | T3 |
| - | |
| I turn away and shut the door and on the stair | N3 |
| Wonder how many times I could have proved my worth | Z3 |
| In something that all others understand or share | N3 |
| But O ambitious heart had such a proof drawn forth | E2 |
| A company of friends a conscience set at ease | L2 |
| It had but made us pine the more The abstract joy | A4 |
| The half read wisdom of daemonic images | L2 |
| Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy | A4 |
William Butler Yeats
(1)
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Meditations In Time Of Civil War is a poem by William Butler Yeats. This page includes the poem text, poet information, related topics, comments, and similar poems.
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