What is the rhyme scheme and meter for this poem?

Question

Death
by William Butler Yeats


Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
Many times rose again.
A great man in his pride
Confronting murderous men
Casts derision upon
Supersession of breath;
He knows death to the bone
Man has created death.

also, what does it mean, exactly? i sort of understand it.. ugh. i dont know.


i really suck at figuring rhyme scheme/meter out.. so if somebody could tell me what it is AND explain how to tell.. that'd be great.
:]

how about this poem? i know the rhyme scheme, but what is the meter?

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.

trochaic tetrameter is what i came up with.. is that right?

"do NOT stand AT my GRAVE and WEEP
i AM not THERE i DO not SLEEP."

trochaic tetramater??

Answer 1

To work out the rhyme scheme, try this:

Assign the letter "a" to the rhyme at the end of line 1.

Now, does line 2 rhyme with line 1? Since it doesn't, assign it the next letter, "b."

Does line 3 rhyme with either line 1 or line 2? If so, give it an "a" or "b."

Same deal with line 4. Does it get an "a" or a "b"?

(A hint -- "animal" and "all" don't rhyme perfectly, but because of the final "L" sound, they work as rhyming words.)

(Later in the poem, "upon" and "bone" are another not-quite rhyming pair that count as rhymes.)

Now you've got the rhyme scheme for the first four lines -- abab. That pattern of alternating rhymed lines is probably going to continue through the rest of the poem. But the rhymes at the end of lines 5-8 aren't the same as the ones in the first four lines, so you assign them new letters -- c and d. And so on with the last four lines.

To figure out the meter, read the first line aloud. Do you hear that the first syllable doesn't get as much stress as the second, and then the third doesn't get as much stress as the fourth, and the fifth doesn't get as much as the sixth?

nor DREAD nor HOPE at TEND

If you tried to say it with the stresses the other way it would sound totally wrong:

NOR dread NOR hope AT tend

So that line is made of three iambs, three pairs of syllables with the stress on the second syllable in each case. The technical term for such a line is "iambic trimeter."

Things get a little tricky as the poem continues. There's one line with only five syllables. (Find it.) But in that line, the first syllable is stressed, and the rest of the line consists of two iambs. So that's a line of iambic trimeter, but it starts with what's called a "headless iamb." That means that the first iamb in the line is missing its first (unstressed) syllable.

There are also some lines in the poem in which the first two syllables are stressed the opposite way, with the emphasis on the first syllable, then the rest of the line goes back to using iambs. In those lines, the poet has substituted a trochee (look it up) for an iamb at the start of the line. That's pretty common practice. Shakespeare does it quite a bit. It keeps the meter from getting monotonous.

So what you have is a poem in iambic trimeter with some substitutions.

You're right about tetrameter in the second poem. And you're hearing the meter right, but you're giving it the wrong name. You're confused about trochees and iambs.

da-DUM is an iamb (two syllables with the stress on the second one).

DUM-da is a trochee (two syllables with the stress on the first one).

Answer 2

Rhyme scheme: aabbccddeeffgghhiijjkk sorry i don't know the rest of the things you asked :(