The Circus Animals' Desertion Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDCDCEE A FGFGFGHH IJIJKJLM NONOPOMM A QDQDERSS| I | A |
| - | |
| I sought a theme and sought for it in vain | B |
| I sought it daily for six weeks or so | C |
| Maybe at last being but a broken man | D |
| I must be satisfied with my heart although | C |
| Winter and summer till old age began | D |
| My circus animals were all on show | C |
| Those stilted boys that burnished chariot | E |
| Lion and woman and the Lord knows what | E |
| - | |
| II | A |
| - | |
| What can I but enumerate old themes | F |
| First that sea rider Oisin led by the nose | G |
| Through three enchanted islands allegorical dreams | F |
| Vain gaiety vain battle vain repose | G |
| Themes of the embittered heart or so it seems | F |
| That might adorn old songs or courtly shows | G |
| But what cared I that set him on to ride | H |
| I starved for the bosom of his faery bride | H |
| - | |
| And then a counter truth filled out its play | I |
| 'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it | J |
| She pity crazed had given her soul away | I |
| But masterful Heaven had intetvened to save it | J |
| I thought my dear must her own soul destroy | K |
| So did fanaticism and hate enslave it | J |
| And this brought forth a dream and soon enough | L |
| This dream itself had all my thought and love | M |
| - | |
| And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread | N |
| Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea | O |
| Heart mysteries there and yet when all is said | N |
| It was the dream itself enchanted me | O |
| Character isolated by a deed | P |
| To engross the present and dominate memory | O |
| players and painted stage took all my love | M |
| And not those things that they were emblems of | M |
| - | |
| III | A |
| - | |
| Those masterful images because complete | Q |
| Grew in pure mind but out of what began | D |
| A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street | Q |
| Old kettles old bottles and a broken can | D |
| Old iron old bones old rags that raving slut | E |
| Who keeps the till Now that my ladder's gone | R |
| I must lie down where all the ladders start | S |
| In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart | S |
William Butler Yeats
(1)
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