Rhyme Scheme - Jacquelyn Engel

The Fish

By  William Butler Yeats 

 

Although you hide in the ebb and flow

Of the pale tide when the moon has set,

The people of coming days will know

About the casting out of my net,

And how you have leaped times out of mind

Over the little silver cords,

And think that you were hard and unkind,

And blame you with many bitter words

 

                In Yeats’s Poem, he describes a type of failure in his life. Through this failure, it was clear that he was hurt and had difficult time recovering. It seems as though this failure was one of a relationship. Yeats “[casted] out [his] net” and this person had “leaped times out of mind”. The author comes to realization through bitter remorse that this person was “hard and unkind”. He does not think highly of this person anymore but rather blames them. Yeats does not end on a happy note; he hold this other person liable for whatever he or she did to him.

                Yeats uses an ABAB rhyme scheme that makes for a very cohesive sounding poem. Throughout his Poem, Yeats uses a true rhyme such as “flow” & “know” and “net” & “set”. Since Yeats uses a true rhyme, it creates for a more tense and curt tone in the poem. This tone allows the audience to feel the mood of the situation that is happening which is resentfulness.  Since the rhyme scheme alternates every other sentence, it creates for a less harsh tone, but it still emits the appropriate amount of harshness to the reader. Yeats wants to convey to the reader his resentment but in a more subtle way.

Yeats, William, B.. "The Fish." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web.