To a Shade Literary Elements

An unnamed individual who appears to be a resident of Dublin.

Three stanzas between 7-10 lines each written primarily in iambic pentameter and largely in an ABA rhyme scheme.

Breath is compared through metaphor to drinking in the phrase "drink of that salt breath." Emotions are compared to blood with the simile "Sweeter emotion, working in their veins/Like gentle blood." The sentence "Your enemy, an old foul mouth, had set/The pack upon him" metaphorically compares the enemy to a mouth and a human group to a pack or herd of animals. Finally, the phrase "gather the Glasnevin coverlet/About your head" uses a metaphor to compare the ground in a graveyard to a bedcover.

"grey gulls" uses alliterative G sounds, as does "gather the Glasnevin coverlet," while "time for you to taste" uses alliterative T sounds. Meanwhile, alliterative I sounds appear in "given their children's children," while alliterative "Ou" sounds appear in "foul mouth."

The poem closes with a dose of situational irony, as Yeats presents death as safer than life—a contrast with the typical conception of death as bleak or frightening. Parnell and Lane's legacies are also presented as ironic—Yeats suggests that, the more they aspire to help the people of Ireland, the more they are rebuffed.

Lyric poetry

Dublin in the early twentieth century

Bitter, Pitying

Protagonists—the Shade (Parnell) and the other man the speaker describes (Lane). Antagonists—Dubliners who acted judgmental or ungrateful towards Parnell and Lane.

The poem's major conflict is between the speaker, Lane, and Parnell, and the people of Dublin more generally. Yeats characterizes the former group as visionary, ambitious, and generous, and the latter as small-minded and mean.

The poem's climax comes in its final lines, when the speaker instructs the Shade to return to the grave.

Early in the poem, the speaker wonders if the builder of the Shade's monument has been paid—foreshadowing an exploration of Parnell's mixed legacy.

The statement that "they are at their old tricks yet" understates the animosity between the Shade and his enemies, which will later be described in more dramatic terms.

The poem as a whole alludes to Charles Parnell and Hugh Lane, and the respective controversies surrounding them in Ireland.

In a sense, the poem's premise is based on metonymy, with Parnell's ghost standing in for Parnell himself.

Dublin's houses are personified with the adjective "gaunt."

Yeats hyperbolically describes Lane as having been "driven from the place" as a way of describing his mistreatment.

N/A