Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee
Why did Yeats need Nine Bean Rows? (a slimverse)
he could have
had five to
rhyme with hive
contrived? Wha?
What brought this on?
A friend of mine told me recently that he had no recollection of studying Yeats at school. When he said this, the above lines from The Lake Isle of Inisfree, sprang in to my head along with “clay and wattles made” and “bee-loud glade” and of course the opening line “I will arise and go now, and go to Inisfree” which I have heard so often that it has now taken on an orotund, stage Irish plumminess.
Our English teacher, Mr Courtney, loved that “bee-loud glade”.
(of course, nine, bean, honey is more musical, he could have used “ten” but then he would have missed that half rhyme between “nine” and “five”)