The Song Of the old Mother

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; And the young lie long and dream in their bed Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head, And their days go 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.

The poem is about a hard-working, poor old woman who compares herself to the young women of the house who spend their days dreaming of love and worrying about their appearance. It is not clear whether these young women are her own children or the children of people she works for as a maid. The poem is written in the ,first person, as if we are listening in to the woman's own thoughts.

Form and Rhyme Form The poem is just ten lines long, with most lines exactly ten syllables long. So the poem is almost like a square - ten by ten. Perhaps this reflects how limited the Old Mother's life is: she cannot break away from the rigidity of her life.

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; And the young lie long and dream in their bed Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head, And their days go 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.

Rhyme The poem is written in rhyming couplets: the rhyme scheme is AA BB CC DD EE. A half-rhyme between the first and last couplets (blow and old) helps to 'round off' the poem, which both starts and finishes with the seed of the fire. Rhyming couplets are a traditional rhyme scheme scheme for simple songs and nursery rhymes, so it is poignant that this sad song about an old woman who feels left out of life rhymes as lightly as a child's nursery rhyme.

If you say the poem out loud you can hear that there are four stresses or beats in each line. Each group of stressed and unstressed syllables is called a metric foot, and verse which has 4 feet per line like this is called tetrameter: I rise ¦ in the dawn, ¦ and I kneel ¦ and blow Till the seed ¦ of the fire ¦ flicker ¦ and glow;

Language The Old Mother uses very simple language. It is ordinary polite English (not colloquial) with few words more than one syllable in length. This suggests that the woman has had a simple, straightforward life and that the things that occupy her now are basic: I must scrub and bake and sweep.

However, the young women have nothing to do but worry about the colour of their ribbons. The contrast Or JUXTAPOSITION between the idleness of the young - who are more suited to physical work - and the old woman, is harsh. The young sigh or complain (line 8) if the wind merely disarranges their hair, but the old woman does not complain - at least, not explicitly. Do you feel that the final line is a veiled complaint?

The title indicates that the woman is a Mother, but it is not clear whether the young whose idleness she describes are her children or not. It is possible that the word Mother is merely an affectionate name for an old woman, and that she has no children - or that her children have grown up and left her alone. If so, is she perhaps reminded of her own daughters when she sees the young women?

Sound There is some effective use of repetition in the poem: - The I must scrub and bake and sweep in line 3 is echoed by the I must work in line 9, reinforcing the repetitive, unending nature of her work. - Line 10 mirrors line 2, giving a feeling of finality and enclosure to the poem. The strong regular rhythm emphasises the physical side of the woman's work: the beat falls on rise, dawn, kneel, blow in line 1, for example, as if hammering out her tough routine.

There is a lot of alliteration and assonance in the poem There is a lot of alliteration and assonance in the poem. For example: - The repeated b and k and p sounds in scrub and bake and sweep (line 3) emphasise how hard and physical the woman's work is - The long l sounds in lie long (line 5) help to convey the laziness of the young women. - We can hear the girls sighing in the assonance of line 8 - sigh if the wind but lift a tress - while the soft rhyme in lines 7 and 8 - idleness / tress emphasises the gentle way in which they spend their days.

Imagery Each morning she blows at the seed of the fire (line 2) until it flickers and glows, and she can get on with the rest of her work. The seed metaphor suggests that the fire is alive and growing. However, when the seed of the fire is repeated at the end of the poem (line 10), it refers to the 'fire' within herself. She is dying, so her own seed is not glowing/growing, but becoming feeble and cold. (And what about her own seeds - her own children?)

The Old Mother's day is dictated by the stars - she starts work at dawn and doesn't stop Till stars are beginning to blink and peep. The burning stars echo the seed of the fire, glowing in the dark sky like coals in the hearth.

Attitudes and ideas Tone The dominant tone of voice we hear is that of resignation - but there is certainly a hint of resentment, even bitterness, in her attitude to the young. The degree of sympathy we feel toward her will probably depend on whether we think the girls in the poem are the daughters of the Old Mother's wealthy employers, or her own children.

ideas Yeats wrote a great deal about the passage of time, and of youth and beauty giving way to old age and death. The Song of the Old Mother is a meditation on this theme. The poem contrasts two types of human endeavour: the young women's dreams of love and obsession with appearance; and the hard, grinding, thankless work that is the Old Mother's lot.

An interesting cross-current is set going by our uncertainty about who the young women are. Are they the Old Mother's own children? If so, their idleness is easier to forgive. Perhaps in her youth the old woman herself dreamed of love, lay late in bed, and obsessed about whether her ribbons matched. Perhaps, as old people often do, she has forgotten what it's like to be young! Or are they the children of the old woman's rich employers? If they are, we are more likely to view them as spoilt and selfish young people whose idle lives are made possible only by the drudgery of poor servants like the Old Mother.

Comparison Little Boy Lost / LIttle Boy Found Before You Were Mine Mother, any greater distance -

The poem is a simple monologue in rhyme - an old woman describes her daily routine and contrasts it with the easy time that young people have. She gets up at dawn to light the fire, wash, prepare food and sweep up. Meanwhile the young people sleep on and pass their day "in idleness". More than a century later, few old people in the west will live quite such hard lives - but the poem