Analysis of Blood And The Moon



BLESSED be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
A bloody, arrogant power
Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
Rose like these walls from these
Storm-beaten cottages --
In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
HaIf dead at the top.
Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the
sun's journey and the moon's;
And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers
he called them once.
I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my
ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke
have travelled there.
Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind
Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had
dragged him down into mankind,
Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his
mind,
And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a
tree,
That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, cen-
tury after century,
Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality;
And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a
dream,
That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its
farrow that so solid seem,
Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its
theme;
i{Saeva Indignatio} and the labourer's hire,
The strength that gives our blood and state magnani-
mity of its own desire;
Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual
fire.
III
The purity of the unclouded moon
Has flung its atrowy shaft upon the floor.
Seven centuries have passed and it is pure,
The blood of innocence has left no stain.
There, on blood-saturated ground, have stood
Soldier, assassin, executioner.
Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear
Or out of abstract hatred, and shed blood,
But could not cast a single jet thereon.
Odour of blood on the ancestral stair!
And we that have shed none must gather there
And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon.

IV
Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling,
And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies,
Tortoiseshell butterflies, peacock butterflies,
A couple of night-moths are on the wing.
Is every modern nation like the tower,
Half dead at the top? No matter what I said,
For wisdom is the property of the dead,
A something incompatible with life; and power,
Like everything that has the stain of blood,
A property of the living; but no stain
Can come upon the visage of the moon
When it has looked in glory from a cloud.


Scheme ABBAXXCXXDDXAEXXXFXFXFGXGCGEEHEEEIJIJIBEBXBXHXXHXBXKHFFH XLMMLBNNBKHHX
Poetic Form
Metre 1111 111110 01010010 11101 1001001 111111 110100 0100111 0100101 0111011 0100101 11101 110101001 11010101001110 110001 01011101110 1111 1011101110101 11011110111 0101 110011001 1101 11011101101 01010111011 1110111 101000101010111 1 0110111010 1 111101011 110100 1111101000100 010101011110 1 111010011011 111101 1101010101111 1 11100110 011110101010 1111010 1011110110100 10 1 01001011 111110101 10100110111 0111001111 111100111 100100100 10110101011 1110110011 1111010101 111100101 0111111101 0101010101 1 01010100101 011101011 110110 0101111101 110010101010 11101110111 11010100101 0100010011010 110110111 01001010111 1101010101 1111010101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 2,393
Words 425
Sentences 14
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 56, 13
Lines Amount 69
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 976
Words per stanza (avg) 212
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 20, 2023

2:09 min read
126

William Butler Yeats

 · 1865 · Sandymount

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. more…

All William Butler Yeats poems | William Butler Yeats Books

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