The Fisherman
William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)
ALTHOUGH I can see him still.
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped 'twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.
Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, 'Before I am old
I shall have written him one
poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.'
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 25, 2023
- 1:04 min read
- 120 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABACDEDEFGFGHIJHKLMNDODOPEQEFRFRSTSTUVUW |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,029 |
Words | 215 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 40 |
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"The Fisherman" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/39476/the-fisherman>.
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