Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

“Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop” has six-line stanzas in iambic meter (alternating stressed and unstressed syllables), alternating six and eight syllables per line. The six-line stanzas follow a ballad stanza form; in keeping with this form, the iambs are slightly irregular, leaning more toward a conversational rhythm. In the poem, every other line uses a strong perfect rhyme, with each of the three stanzas rhyming ABCBDB.

Many of the Crazy Jane poems use refrains; along with this poem’s ballad stanza, these poems embody the group’s title, Words for Music Perhaps. The “perhaps” in the title shows that while Yeats does not intend the poems to be lyrics in a literal fashion, but envisions the works in the context of a folk tradition.

Internal rhyme and alliteration shape “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop,” creating a tighter structure within the loose ballad meter. Each stanza has interlocking alliterative patterns featuring a set of consonant sounds. Stanza one repeats b and m consonants (“Bishop,” “much,” “breasts,” “be,” “mansion”) alongside f and v sounds (“flat,” “fallen,” “veins,” “heavenly,” “foul”).