The Circus Animal Desertion Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCBCBDD EFEFEFGG HIHIJIKL MNMNONLL PCPCDQRR| I sought a theme and sought for it in vain | A |
| I sought it daily for six weeks or so | B |
| Maybe at last being but a broken man | C |
| I must be satisfied with my heart although | B |
| Winter and summer till old age began | C |
| My circus animals were all on show | B |
| Those stilted boys that burnished chariot | D |
| Lion and woman and the Lord knows what | D |
| II | - |
| What can I but enumerate old themes | E |
| First that sea rider Oisin led by the nose | F |
| Through three enchanted islands allegorical dreams | E |
| Vain gaiety vain battle vain repose | F |
| Themes of the embittered heart or so it seems | E |
| That might adorn old songs or courtly shows | F |
| But what cared I that set him on to ride | G |
| I starved for the bosom of his faery bride | G |
| - | |
| And then a counter truth filled out its play | H |
| i The Countess Cathleen was the name I gave it | I |
| She pity crazed had given her soul away | H |
| But masterful Heaven had intetvened to save it | I |
| I thought my dear must her own soul destroy | J |
| So did fanaticism and hate enslave it | I |
| And this brought forth a dream and soon enough | K |
| This dream itself had all my thought and love | L |
| - | |
| And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread | M |
| Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea | N |
| Heart mysteries there and yet when all is said | M |
| It was the dream itself enchanted me | N |
| Character isolated by a deed | O |
| To engross the present and dominate memory | N |
| players and painted stage took all my love | L |
| And not those things that they were emblems of | L |
| III | - |
| Those masterful images because complete | P |
| Grew in pure mind but out of what began | C |
| A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street | P |
| Old kettles old bottles and a broken can | C |
| Old iron old bones old rags that raving slut | D |
| Who keeps the till Now that my ladder's gone | Q |
| I must lie down where all the ladders start | R |
| In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart | R |
William Butler Yeats
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