Summary

Introducing his collection, Yeats invites the rose close to him as he sings the ancient songs of Ireland. He will sing of druids, and of Cuchulain.

He again invites her to come near, to avoid hearing small, narrow thoughts. He does not want her too near, however, because then all he could hear would be the "bright things" said to the dead by God, and learn a language nobody knows anymore.

Analysis

Yeats addresses this poem to the rose, the unifying symbol of the collection. Typically the rose symbolized a nationalist vision of Ireland, feminized in the character "Roisin Dubh," which translates, "the black rose." The rose also symbolizes Maud Gonne, a female revolutionary with whom Yeats was deeply in love. Her nationalist politics, coupled with her dark beauty, resonate with the wild, beautiful symbol of Ireland.

The ancient figures whom Yeats promises to sing about include druids, who were healers and priests in Ancient Ireland. He also promises to sing of Cuchulain, the hound of Culain, who is the great hero of the Irish myth cycles.

Yeats's hesitation to allow the rose to come too near can be read a number of ways. On the one hand, it represents his wish to sing about "common things" in addition to "strange things." He insinuates that if the rose comes too near, he will only write poetry about high, abstract, beautiful things - about the strange miracles of God. Yeats wants also to address common, lowly subjects - "the weak worm" and "the field mouse." Thus he expresses a desire to poeticize all of Ireland, from the field mice to the religious truths.

Moreover, Yeats' hesitation expresses his ambivalence about Irish nationalism. One could read his hesitation as expressing anxiety that if he communes to directly with the feminized Ireland he will be infected with the desire to rebel, and with a fanaticism for the dead which usually characterized Irish nationalists before 1916. The dead language to which Yeats refers is Gaelic. If he were to come too close to the rose, he suggests, he would write poetry in this ancient language, thus rendering his poems useless in addressing a wider society.

In short, Yeats wants to do justice to "the rose" - i.e. to Ireland - without fully identifying with it, thus leaving him room to translate his homeland for a wide literary audience. He wants to capture the spirit of his land without become overwhelmed by that spirit. He wants to celebrate Ireland, but always with critical distance.

Summary

This poem is expressed in a conversation between Fergus and a druid. The druid, at first only asks him what he would like to do.

Fergus says that he has followed the druid for the whole day as he changed shapes, and that now he finally holds a human form. He recounts how young Conchubar sat at his side, and seemed so wise that he gave his crown to him, to ease his own sorrows. He tried to become one of the people, but failed, still feeling like a king. Fergus then expresses a desire to be as wise as a druid, despite the druid's warnings that such wisdom severs one from humanity.

The druid gives him a bag of dreams to open. Fergus sees what he has been in his life, but sees it all as a web of sorrow. Knowing all, he is filled with sadness.

Analysis

This poem primarily treats the isolation of a king who is weary of his rule and his social role. King Fergus is an Irish historical figure who figures in the Tain. Fergus fell in love with Ness, and gave up his throne to Conchubar, who was the son of Ness by another marriage. Myths look on this variously as an usurption and as a source of great happiness for Fergus, who did not enjoy being king.

Yeats's version of the myth is somewhat consistent with both interpretations. Fergus is ambivalent about whether he did the right thing in surrendering his throne. He has not assimilated into non-royal society. He seeks the help of a druid, an ancient healing or religious figure in Celtic societies, to clarify whether he has made the right choice.

The druid's help, which comes in the form of a "slate-colored thing" which refers both to the bag of dreams and, perhaps, to the grave. With the help of this bag of dreams, Fergus "know[s] all" at the poem's end. But this knowledge does not quell his anxiety; rather, it sinks him into depression. By knowing all, he has robbed himself of the hope that comes with uncertainty. He is as sure as death, and as futureless.

Summary

A swineherd comes to Emer, his mother, who is making clothing, and says that he does not need to watch the road anymore. Emer throws down her web, and raises her hands reddened with dye and cries out loud.

She asks him what if his master comes home triumphant, why would he be afraid? He is too strong to idle away his life as a swineherd.

He asks where he can find his father, and she says in the Red Branch camp. Cuchulain lives among these men, and even King Conchubar sings his praise. Cuchulain notices that the swineherd has invaded their camp, and fights the young man - his son, though he does not know that - remarking that the stranger looks like a woman he once loved.

As Cuchulain kills the swineherd, the youth reveals that he is Cuchulain's son. Cuchulain is so full of grief and rage that King Conchubar is afraid that he will slaughter them all. He asks the druids to chant ancient spells into Cuchulain's ears, so that when he arises, enraged, he will fight the sea rather than humans.

Analysis

Although Yeats writes poetry that is lyric in form, the subject matter of this piece is epic, in the style of Homer or the ancient Irish bards. It has a clear narrative with a beginning, middle and end. The poem enacts a familiar Oedipal struggle. Instead of the son slaying his father, as is the case in the Oedipus myth, the father, Cuchulain, slays his son. Madness ensues.

Cuchulain's fight with the sea is based on a tale from the ancient Irish sagas, in which the hero loses touch with his wife, Emer. Emer urges her son to find his father and wreak revenge on him, but Cuchulain is so powerful that he slaughters him.

Summary

Yeats contests the cliché that beauty "passes like a dream,' noting that beauty has been responsible for major tragedies of human violence, including the sack of Troy and the death of Usna's children. He insinuates that Maud Gonne's beauty is capable of inspiring such destruction as well.

Yeats then suggests that while most human life passes by like a dream, Maud Gonne's "lonely face" lives on. He even insists that immortal beings - archangels - bow down before Gonne's unchanging beauty, suggesting that her being existed alongside God before the world began. The world, indeed, is a mere grassy path created for her to tread.

Analysis

Yeats wrote this poem to Maud Gonne, with whom he was deeply in love. He often compares her to Helen of Troy, arguing that her beauty, like Helen's, is capable of wrecking turmoil between nations. Indeed, as Gonne is a representative of Ireland, this comparison suggests that her beauty embodies the strife between Ireland and England, which is especially fitting given that Gonne was a fierce Irish nationalist. The reference to Usna's children in the same stanza likens her to Deirdre, an Irish heroine who was destined to bring suffering on the area of Ulster, because too many men fell in love with her.

Before its publication, George Russell objected to the final stanza of the poem (the poem had originally only had two stanzas). He thought that it lowered the quality of the poem because it added a sentimental note. This last stanza is closely tied to the circumstances under which the poem was written - after Yeats and Gonne had gone hiking together. The final lines - "He made the world to be a grassy road / Before her wandering feet" - seem to allude to this hike. Moreover, the concept of "wandering" possibly captures Yeats's perennial frustration that Gonne would not take him as a lover or a husband.

Summary

Yeats writes that Maud Gonne's beauty is so powerful that even Michael, the archangel in charge of God's war with the Devil, would give up his battling for her. Instead, he would devote himself to praising Gonne's beauty peacefully. The example of his peacefulness would finally win the world's sinners over to God's side. God himself gives up his war with Satan, pleased with Gonne's pacifying effect.

Analysis

This short, simple poem is quite irreverently humorous. It picks up on the suggestion in the final stanza of "The Rose of the World" that Maude Gonne is the most important human being in the world and ought to be worshiped even by archangels.

The archangel Michael is one of the most famous of all heavenly denizens in Catholic traditions. He is the general in charge of God's ongoing war with Satan. The suggestion that this archangel would give up his cause to make a garland for Gonne - like a lovesick undergraduate - is ludicrous and charming. Yeats intends the poem as tongue-in-cheek hyperbole - as a gentle ribbing of Catholic dogma - even as he also intends it as a sincere tribute to the woman he loves above all else in the universe.

Summary

Sea-spray-spotted figures gather on a beach to go to battle. The poet addresses them, saying that war does not carry peace, and that if they have felt the love of a woman, they should go home.

The Rose has seen many men go to battle for her, but none return.

Analysis

Yeats begins both stanzas of this poem with a strong invocation: "Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!" This idea of setting the Rose - here, a beautiful dark woman representing Ireland - apart from other roses and ranking her first in importance, is consistent with his complex form of nationalism.

The concept of female love being superior to battle reappears throughout Yeats' poetry. Indeed, love, beauty and battle often ring together throughout this collection, which makes sense given that his beloved, Maud Gonne, was a militant nationalist. Some have speculated that Gonne resisted Yeats' courtship in part because he was not violent enough for her.

The final idea in the poem, of inevitable defeat, refers to Ireland's history of war and resistance. There had been a nationalist rebellion against the British in nearly every generation up to Yeats', but none were successful. Thus the Rose's champions, however devoted and valiant, seem doomed to fail as long as they pursue such violent methods.

Summary

Fairies sing a song over the burial monument of Diarmuid and Grania. They sing that the pair is "old and gay," and ask for them to be given rest away from human life.

The fairies say that they are also old and gay, maybe thousands of years old.

Analysis

Yeats begins the poem with a play on the cliche "old and gray," describing the mythical pair as "old and gay." This demonstrates a nostalgia for the ancient Irish period of heroes and scholars, and, importantly, the lack of a British presence in Ireland.

Diarmuid and Grania belong to an ancient Irish tale. Diarmuid was an infantryman in the army called the Fianna, which fought for the ancient hero Finn MacCumhall. Finn wanted to marry Grania, but she ran away with Diarmuid. Finn eventually killed Diarmuid, and thus regained Grania's attentions for himself.

Summary

Yeats expresses his desire to build a small cabin at Innisfree, out of natural materials, and live alone.

He will find peace on the lake, where it drops from the morning, and the beautiful midnight.

He determines to leave immediately, because even when he stands in a road or on a city pavement, he hears the lapping of the lake waters in his heart.

Analysis

Yeats's profession of love for nature is one of his most famous and beautiful poems. It is unusual in this collection as it contains no references to the Irish nationalist movement, to Maude Gonne, or to ancient Irish mythology. Yeats first wrote the poem in London, in 1890, where he was feeling intensely homesick.

Innisfree, whose name means "heather island" in Gaelic, is an island off the coast of Ireland of intense natural beauty. It is located in County Sligo, which is where Yeats's mother's family came from, and which he identified as the part of Ireland and the world closest to his heart. In the idea of building a home there and living as a hermit, Yeats was influenced by American transcendentalists such as Thoreau. He wrote in a letter: "My father read to me some passage out of Walden, and I planned to live some day in a cottage on a little island called Innisfree."

Summary

Yeats stands over the cradle of an infant, noting that the angels, sick of the dead, are also there. God is pleased in heaven, as are the "Sailing Seven" to see such a well-behaved infant. Yeats kisses the infant, sad because he knows that he will miss the baby as it grows up.

Analysis

This sweet, simple poem takes a much more traditional, rhyming form than most of Yeats's work. Rather than being a free-form lyrical poem, it is three stanzas of four lines each, rhyming in the pattern ABAB CDCD EFEF. Each line is two iambs.

The "sailing seven" refers to either the planets, or the seven stars of the Pleiades. They link the child to a cosmic order, suggesting that an infants pleasure not only affects human beings, but resonates with the order of the universe as a whole.

Summary

An inexpressible pity hides within love. The people who are engaged in trade, the cold wind, and the hazel grove all threaten the poet's beloved.

Analysis

The object of Yeats's affection in this poem, as in all poems of this period, is Maud Gonne. Yeats takes a self-pitying note, arguing that he is wretched due to his experience of unrequited love. He cannot even experience the innocuous pleasures of nature - "the shadowy hazel grove" - without feeling his love for Gonne to be threatened.

Yeats is quite right in worrying that any number of natural or social phenonomena might take his love away from him. Maud Gonne was deeply involved in Irish nationalism, a movement for which Yeats had complicated feelings. The "folk who are buying and selling" could represent those who were negotiating Ireland's future - in Ireland of the 1890s, that was the Home Rule party, led by John Redmond. The result of these negotiations could and did affect Yeats's relationship with Gonne. Because they were unsuccessful, Gonne radicalized further, moving away from Yeats' politics.

Summary

The poem follows a loose narrative. In the first stanza, natural images overshadow the sorrow of humankind. In the second, a figure with "red mournful lips" arises, seeming to carry with her the weight of epic tragedy. She moves into the natural world, and the images that seemed sufficient in themselves - the sparrow, the moon - now express the infinite sadness of human misery.

Analysis

This poem was written in 1891, only two years after Yeats met and fell in love with Maud Gonne. Yeats uses two classical allusions in the highly structured poem, one comparing the woman's doom to Odysseus, who helped in the expedition to recover Helen when Paris took her from Sparta. He only returned after ten years. "Proud as Priam" refers to Paris's father, who was killed by Achilles's son, Neoptolemus, after the fall of Troy.

Before the woman's presence in this poem, the world exists apart from humankind. It's natural beauty and struggle "blot out" the more complicated struggles of humankind. The influence of the mournful woman, though, invites human meaning into the poem. First, the woman inspires the poet with epic comparisons; then, when she moves out into nature, she recasts the moon, sparrow and leaves in terms of human sorrow.

Yeats thus suggests the inspiring, albeit sorrowful, nature of love - both in terms of a particular beloved and in terms of the feminine in general. The beautiful woman does not "compose" the natural elements around her, but her influence renders them incapable of expressing any meaning other than that of humankind. Whether the woman stands for Ireland, for Maud Gonne, or for the spirit of the feminine, she redefines the force of the world, focusing it into an expression of human sorrow.

Summary

Yeats exhorts his beloved: when you are old and falling asleep by your fire, take down this book, and dream of how you used to be as you read it.

Dream of how many people loved you when you were younger. Only one man loved you as you grew older.

Murmur to yourself sadly about how Love paced on the mountains and hid his face in stars as you grew old.

Analysis

Like so many of the poems in this collection, "When You Are Old" was written for Maud Gonne. It is based on Ronsard's "Quand Vous Serez Bien Vieille," Sonnets Pour Helene (1578), which maintains the Maud Gonne/Helen of Troy parallel that Yeats so often draws. The idea of love in age is an ancient one, meant to express the fact that love inheres not merely in youth, but in something deeper and more lasting.

Yeats capitalizes "Love," thus personifying the concept, which is is a nod to the poem's 16th century roots. Although monotheism had taken over Europe, Greek and Roman gods were very much a part of 16th century consciousness. Yeats's "Love" is a modernization of the ancient figure, Eros.

Summary

The poet wishes that he and his beloved could escape from their circumstances and be together. This wish is captured in the image of the two of them transformed into white birds floating on the sea-foam. He asks his beloved not to concentrate on temporal and sorrowful images - the fading meteor, the rose and lily - and reiterates his desire to be apart from the world with her, as white birds together.

Analysis

Yeats composed this poem for Maud Gonne's in 1892 when the pair went for a walk along the cliffs of Howth, a seaside village just south of Dublin. The poem was written the day after Yeats had unsuccessfully proposed to her for the first time. Gonne reecalls that she said that she would rather be a seagull than any other bird. Yeats sent her this poem three days later.

The "Danaan Shore" refers to Tier-nan-Oge (or Tir na nOg in Gaelic), an imaginary land where mortals live as long as fairies. Yeats interpreted Gonne's wish to become a seagull as a wish for freedom from sorrow and time. He wishes, in vain, that they could escape the political and social circumstances that keep them apart, whether on an isolated island, in a mythic environment, or by becoming white birds.

Summary

The poet dreams that his loved one had died in a foreign place among strangers. The peasants nail her coffin shut, raise a rude cross above her coffin, and plant cypress trees around the grave. They leave her to the "indifferent stars" until the finds her and writes her epitaph: "She was more beautiful than thy first love / But now lies under boards."

Analysis

The poem is based on Maude Gonne's journey to France to recover from fatigue. She had a predisposition to tuberculosis, so Yeats was worried that she would die in France, among strangers. He sent her this poem while she was there.

Perhaps more than any other, the poem expresses a conventionally Romantic disposition in Yeats. The setting - a foreign land - the subject - lonely death - and the upshot - that the poet can play a role in immortalizing the death of a beauty - are common themes in Romantic poetry. For instance, Wordsworth's famous poem "She Walked in Beauty" touches upon the same themes.

Summary

The poem describes the Countess Cathleen after her death. She has left behind the raiment and pride of her worldly existence and walks with mournful beauty. She dances among the angels and all the universe in in accord with Heaven.

Analysis

The Countess Cathleen is a figure out of Irish legend. Yeats later wrote a play about her, in fact. According to her legend, a famine strikes Ireland and Satan sends demons to buy the souls of the starving Irish. The Countess sells her vast estates and possessions in order to purchase the people food and to keep them from selling their souls. She is thwarted by Satan, however, and eventually sacrifices her own life for the Irish poor.

The Countess' legendary donation of her worldly possessions takes on an otherworldly aspect in this poem. It suggests that Cathleen, in giving over her body, lets go of her heavy burden. She dances lightly and wisely in the heavens, celebrating her sacrifice and her role in the grand order of the universe.

Summary

The poet asks who will follow King Fergus' example and leave the cares of the world to know the wisdom of nature. He exhorts young men and women alike to leave off brooding over "love's bitter mystery" and to turn instead to the mysterious order of nature, over which Fergus rules.

Analysis

This short poem is full of mystery and complexity. It was James Joyce's favorite poem, and figures in his famous novel Ulysses, where Stephen Daedalus sings it to his dying mother.

On one level, the poem represents Yeats' exhortation to the young men and women of his day to give over their political and emotional struggles in exchange for a struggle with the lasting mysteries of nature. He suggests that Fergus was both brave and wise to give up his political ambition in exchange for the wisdom of the Druids, as depicted in the poem "Fergus and the Druid." Of course, from that poem we know that Fergus' sacrifice was complicated. He did not find a life of frolic and happiness with the Druids. But he did find knowledge, wisdom and perspective - perhaps, indeed, too much.

On a second level, the poem captures Yeats' frustration at his own failed love affair. He seems desperate to turn from the contemplation of love's mysteries that have preoccupied him for so many of the poems in The Rose, convinced that this meditation has only increased his sorrow without providing any means of improving his situation. The exhortation, on this level, is directed inward, to his own heart. He challenges himself to take Fergus' direction and leave love behind him.

Moreover, the fact that Yeats draws upon the imagery of Fergus to make his point suggests his inclination to reference the mythic and legendary heritage of his country rather than the present political struggles that engaged Ireland. In this light, the question, "Who goes with Fergus?" seems to ask Ireland to join him in contemplating the mythic past rather than the sticky present. A return to Fergus entails a move away from the reference points of contemporary politics, toward the mythology of the Irish people.

Finally, the poem suggests the journey toward death. A return to nature, as also seen in the previous poem, "The Countess Cathleen in Paradise," expresses a movement away from worldly cares and possessions analogous to death. Yeats summons the courage that one requires to look beyond the mysteries one knows and suffers under - those of love, of politics - to deeper and weirder mysteries - the wood, the sea, the wandering stars.

In all, the poem has a beauty, especially when spoken aloud, that evades simple readings and analyses. It captures the political, social, emotional and national ambiguity at the heart of Yeats' collection, as well as his reverence for the imagination.

Summary

This poem uses surreal imagery to describe visions of an imaginary world from the point of view of a man before and after his burial. In the first stanza, the man is in a crowd, thinking about his beloved, but he is shaken out of his ease when a pile of fish sing about a forgotten isle where people love eternally. The man next wanders on the beach of Lisadell, and the worms too sing about the isle, though he doesn't understand them. Again, at Scanavin, the grass sings to him.

In the final stanza, we find the man buried under the hill of Lugnagall where he hopes to know eternal peace. But the worms proclaim that God has made a beautiful pattern in the sky. The man does not rest in peace.

Analysis

The title of this poem is somewhat misleading. The man in the poem is invited to contemplate Faeryland, but he repeatedly fails to do so. He cannot "listen" to the songs of the fish, the worms, the grass, who could tell him of Faeryland. Faeryland, in this poem, might be thought of as a place of universals and absolutes, where truths are unqualified by human context. The man never gives up his petty loves and hates, and so cannot attain eternity even in his death.

The naturalistic imagery in the poem, as well as the specific place names that Yeats assigns to where the man wanders, stems from his experience as a youth in Sligo. Sligo is a county in westernmost Ireland, a place that Yeats said affected his poetry more than anywhere else in the world. The images of fish, worms and other natural creatures also resonate with Yeats' expressed aim in "The Rose upon the Rood of Time" that he wishes to notice the lowly things in the world, not just the searing bright things. Indeed, in this poem, it is the lowly, overlooked creatures who contain a spark of divinity. They are the key to eternal contemplation. The man, like many of us, remains deaf to them.

"The Man Who dreamed of Faeryland" is similar to "Who goes with Fergus?" in that the poet implicitly urges Irish men and women to return to nature. Indeed, "Faeryland" evokes very strongly the spirit of the druids, who felt that all natural things contain the divine. Yeats asks that his countrymen reflect upon the land that they purport to love and defend in their political battles. He also suggests that the ultimate value in life is to be found in such contemplation, not in the temporary concerns of politics.

Summary

Yeats imagines a time when the Irish ruled Eire (Ireland). He envisions a green branch hung with bells. These bells sang in the weather - sometimes happy, sometimes sad - and charmed the people of Ireland away from their daily tasks to think upon them. Yeats suggests that however hard times may be in Ireland - where times can be very bad indeed - the bells and the memories they summon make one forget the petty injustice and bitterness of daily life.

Analysis

Yeats touches upon a theme familiar in from the two preceding poems. Those poems suggested that it is worthwhile for the Irish to return to the eternities that follow from contemplating nature. This poem illustrates, in the image of the bell tree, how such contemplation can carry one away from the bitter cares of being Irish and reunite one with Ireland's mythic, peaceful past.

This poem is nostalgic for the old Eire (Gaelic for Ireland). Yeats imagines that peace existed in ancient Ireland, which is hard or even impossible to recapture after the arrival of the English. "A Book of Stories Selected from the Irish Novelists" thus describes a pre-colonized country, even before the invaders have withdrawn.

Munster and Connemara refer to two provinces which were designated before the English arrival. Munster is the southern province, while Connemara is an area in County Galway, facing the Atlantic Ocean.

Summary

The poem is spoken from the point of view of an old man who looks upon the political and romantic obsessions of the young Irish. He suggests that once upon a time he too "talked of love and politics" but that now, with his age and perspective, his thoughts rest on Time and eternal questions. In the final stanza we learn that these meditations are not pleasant, as he suggests that no woman pay him attention due to his age, though he still recalls the women he once loved. The poem ends as he curses Time, which has changed him from young to old.

Analysis

This poem is based on a conversation that Yeats had with an elderly poet. He wrote in a letter that the peom was "little more than a translation into verse of the very words of an old Wicklow peasant." Wicklow, by the way, is a green, rural county south of Dublin. This precise technique of observation of peasants is what Yeats later recommended to J.M. Synge upon meeting him in Paris, and which led to successful works like The Playboy of the Western World.

The elderly peasant's lamentation is that time has transformed him into someone that is no longer important or viable. This is in contrast to Yeats's other, more wistful and gentle portrayal of age in the rest of the collection. The pikes to which the "old pensioner" refers are the weapons traditionally used in nationalist uprisings against the British, which the man is too old for, so regards as futile.

This poem complicates Yeats' earlier poems, many of which exhort the Irish to contemplate eternal questions like Time rather than take up their pikes, so to speak, for a passing political issue. This old man, who is forced away from politics and love, shows the downside of such contemplative non-participation in life. Of course, he is still tormented by the passions of his youth for women and conversation, and so his meditations aren't exactly what Yeats has in mind in poems like "Who Goes with Fergus?" and "The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland."

Summary

Yeats tells a story in verse. An old priest was weary and sad because most of his flock had died. He was sent for by a sick man, but fell asleep in his chair before answering the call. The stars multiplied and God talked to mankind.

In the morning, Father Gilligan awoke with a start, realizing that he had not done his duty. He rides to the sick man's house where his wife answers the door and says that the man has died. Father Gilligan is horrified and cries "mavrone!" until the woman thanks him for coming the previous night. He falls to his knees and thanks God for sending an angel down to do his work when he was too tired to do so.

Analysis

This poem takes a ballad form - a traditional form, usually sung, with regular, short stanzas that tell a story. It has a more overtly religious content than most of Yeats's poems. As a protestant who turned to theosophy and mysticism, Yeats usually stays away from Catholic themes. Yeats also usually stays away from the Irish language, which he uses in this poem when he writes, "mavrone!" which is the Irish, "mo bhron," a cry of grief.

The poem not only speaks to the poverty of rural Ireland, but also to their extreme religiosity. The priest is horrified by the fact that he did not make it to the bedside of the sick man before he died because no one performed the rites of extreme unction, meaning in the Catholic tradition that the man did not die in a state of grace, and therefore cannot go to heaven. The divine intervention which caused this not to be the case is an affirmation of a loving, kind God.

Yeats intends this ballad as an homage to the traditional poetry and legend of his country. He was a collector of similar Irish stories and songs and appreciated their immediate, naive beauty. Certainly this tale draws upon the character as well as the form of the traditional Irish ballad.

Summary

The poet invites his beloved to look inside her heart, where a holy tree grows. Joy shakes its leaves. The shaking of the tree has made him murmur a wizard song for you.

The poet continues, telling his beloved not to look into the mirror, or only for a little while, because a dangerous image grows there. All things turn to barrenness and mirrors hold the image of out tiredness. In those frightening places the ravens of unresting thought fly, and make one's eyes unkind.

Analysis

This poem, like many that are addressed to Maud Gonne, contrasts her inward with her outward beauty. On a simple level, the poem suggests that the beloved look within herself to the spirit of her nature (the tree), which he himself loves. Further, she should shun the mirror, which captures her external appearance. Her appearance, though beautiful now, will fade with age. Her inner tree, though, will never grow any less beautiful.

On a more arcane level, the holy tree could refer either to the tree of knowledge or to the Sephirotic tree of the Kabbalah. The Sephirotic tree resonates with both good and evil. This poem would fit with the Kabbalic notion of man, which is divided between good and evil. Looking in a glass makes the tree into its reverse image, barren and threatening. Yeats was certainly familiar with the Kabbalah from his theosophic practices.

Summary

The poet writes that while composing poetry he thinks back on times he talked at the fireside of "the dark men" - i.e. the dark urges and warlike deeds - within passionate people. They also discuss the mix of sorrow and content that comes with a passionless life, and of the music of swords on the battlefield.

Analysis

This poem anticipates some of Yeats's later work (especially after he began to be influenced by Ezra Pound) in its spareness and its lack of specifically Irish allusions. The poem is bleak and full of ambiguous images, spilling from descriptions of the ways men engage battle to a weird bat-like image at the poem's end.

The poem can be read as a reflection on Yeats' own writing. It begins, "When I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes," inviting us to consider the poem as a document of Yeats' imaginative process. Indeed the poem touches upon several of the identities captured in the preceding poems - the passionate dark individualist, the sorrowful resigned soul, the multitudes at battle. And through it all, Yeats spins eerie images of bats and animals, which seem both to refer to his poems about communion with nature, but which also seem like expressions of pure, inexplicable imaginative fire. He is capturing for us - performing for us - the free-associative brilliance that makes his poetry so challenging and rewarding.

On a more concrete level, the "blossoming dream" is possibly an allusion to Irish Republicanism. The 'Republic of Eire' was a name that could not be spoken in Ireland, as it had dangerous nationalist connotations. Hence the description of the multitudes rising up in battle with the 'Ineffable Name' on their lips, which might well represent the Republicans striving against England for liberty.

Summary

The poet declares that he would like to be considered among the poets who have sweetened Ireland's miserable history with songs and rhymes. He asks that he be judged this way despite the presence of a woman throughout the poems.

He wishes to be considered alongside Davis, Mangan, and Ferguson, because his rhymes like their tales tell of death, and of fairies and druids. The poet further suggests that these tales are not the simple legends and entertainments they may seem at first reading, but that he has captured dark and elusive human truths in his poems if one cares to delve for them.

The poet says, indeed, that his poems are a document of his

complex human heart, which we should look into because life is very short and we should make room for such abstract meditations as those on God, time, love and dream, lest they pass us by altogether.

Analysis

This poem was first published under the title "Apologia addressed to Ireland in the coming days." It is a defensive action on the part of Yeats, who wishes to explain that his love for Maud Gonne, which is so foregrounded in the collection, is an important part of the struggle for Irish independence. He thinks that his nationalism is not to be considered less than older patriots. Those whom he mentions specifically are Thomas Osborne Davis (1814-45) who was the leader of the Young Ireland party and wrote poetry; James Clarence Mangan (1803-49) who was a translator and Irish romantic poet; and Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810-86), a poet who translated Gaelic legends into English.

Moreover, Yeats invites us to consider the role of poetic contemplation in a world torn by political strife. He argues that it is very easy to get caught up in the day to day, to forget the eternal realm of dreams that poetry has access to. Indeed, Yeats offers his poet's heart - the various dimensions of which he has expressed in the ensuing poems - as his contribution to Irish independence. He is a warrior of the imagination, a present-day druid, offering respite and wisdom to a present-day Fergus or Cuchulain. And this contribution, he suggests throughout his poems, is as vital as any party affiliation could possibly be.

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• Summary and Analysis of The Rose of the World
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• Summary and Analysis of A Faery Song
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• Summary and Analysis of The Man Who dreamed of Faeryland
• Summary and Analysis of The Dedication to a Book of Stories selected from the Irish Novelists
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