Meditations In Time Of Civil War Poem Rhyme Scheme

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William Butler Yeats

Meditations In Time Of Civil War Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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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