The Circus Animals' Desertion Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDCDCEE A FGFGFGHH IJIJKJLM NONOPOMM A QDQDERSSI | A |
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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 |
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II | A |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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III | A |
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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
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