Read this excerpt from "The Song of the Old Mother” by William Butler Yeats. And the young lie long and dream in their bed Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head, And their day goes over in idleness, And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress: While I must work because I am old, And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold. Which statement best describes the effect of rhyme on this excerpt?
Answers
Answer:
Song of the Old Mother" is a poem by William Butler Yeats that first appeared in The Wind Among the Reeds anthology, published in 1899. The poem echoes Yeats' fascination with the Irish peasantry.
Written in first person, the poem explains the difficult chores and struggles of an aged, unfortunate woman and her bitter resentment to the young children, whose worries of fondness and personal appearance pale to insignificance when compared to the toils of the old woman.
There is some confusion whether the term "mother" should be taken literally, or if it refers to old women in general. The subject of the poem is in fact a maid of some kind[citation needed], employed in a wealthy household. This would increase the resentment she feels, experiencing almost abject jealousy of not having the option to live that kind of life.
The poem has a convenient form; ten lines in length with each line holding four stresses. It is almost like a confining grid, emphasizing the Old Mother's unbending existence. There is a clear rhyming scheme of couplets, with a nice half rhyme towards the end which rounds the poem off properly.
In the poem, the fire the Old Mother lights in the morning is meant to represent the Old Mother herself, waking up when the fire is blown, and resting when the fire grows both "cold" and "feeble".