1188 Yeats, William Butler
is a prime example in which the speaker is figured
as “A sixty-year-old smiling public man” (l. 8) as he
tours a schoolroom. The children’s youth makes him
think of a woman he once loved and heightens his
awareness of his own advanced age. He calls himself
an “old scarecrow” (l. 32) and wonders if a mother
seeing a child in such a state would consider him
“compensation for the pang of his birth” (l. 39).
“Sailing to Byzantium” (1928) similarly deals with
the issue of aging, opening with the statement “That
is no country for old men” (l. 1) and noting that “An
aged man is but a paltry thing / A tattered coat upon
a stick” (ll. 9–10).
The thought of eventual death likewise fills the
poet at times with a sense of futility. Yeats’s famous
late poem “Under Ben Bulben” (1939) refers to the
place the poet wished to be buried, and Yeats pro-
vides his own epitaph—“Cast a cold eye / On life,
on death. / Horseman, pass by!” (ll. 92–94)—which
presents the grave as a forbidding place to be. A
concern with death is also evident in “An Irish
Airman Foresees his Death” (1917). The airman
ominously decides, “I know that I shall meet my
fate / Somewhere among the clouds above” (ll. 1–2)
and thus is convinced that he will not return from
his mission as Yeats explores the horrors of modern
warfare. In both poems, death is not a welcomed
final rest but instead is figured as a sad end to life
and productivity.
There is also a concern for the futility of political
change in Yeats’s work. During most of the poet’s
life, Ireland was subject to British rule. His poem
“Easter 1916” (1921) celebrates martyrs for the Irish
cause, but it also hesitates nears its end when the
speaker second-guesses the effectiveness of their
sacrifices. He asks, “Was it needless death after
all? / For England may keep faith / For all that is
done and said” (ll. 67–69), and the speaker wonders
if England might finally be trusted in its repeated
promise of Irish home rule. “September 1913”
(1914) also expresses futility in Irish politics in its
refrain at the end of each stanza, “Romantic Ireland’s
dead and gone, / It’s with O’Leary in the grave” (ll.
7–8). With these lines, the speaker expresses doubt
in the ability of Ireland to believe in itself again.
Futility in creative endeavors is another of
Yeats’s themes and can be observed in “The Circus
Animals’ Desertion” (1939), in which the poet enu-
merates the themes and characters that have filled
his plays and poems over the decades. He begins by
noting, “I sought a theme and sought for it in vain”
(l. 1) and notes that since he is “but a broken man
/ I must be satisfied with my heart” (ll. 3–4). After
a lifetime of writing, the reader might expect the
poet to be filled with a sense of accomplishment,
but instead he expresses dissatisfaction with his life’s
work. Even more pessimistic is “The Fascination of
What’s Difficult” (1910), in which the reader learns
that the speaker believes that which is difficult has
“dried the sap” from his “veins” and cost him “joy”
and “content” in his “heart” (ll. 2, 3, 4). “My curse,”
the speaker says, “on plays / That have to be set up
in fifty ways” (ll. 8–9). It is thus specifically the poet’s
work in drama which is the concern in the poem,
although it is surely also the general challenge of
fulfilling his poetic vision that the speaker gets at
here, as the pursuit of art is presented as at least a
partially futile endeavor.
Joe MoffettLove in the poems of William Butler Yeats
There are many types of love in the Irish poet W. B.
Yeats’s work. In the popular imagination, he is well
remembered for his poems dealing with romantic
love. In “When You Are Old,” from Yeats’s 1893
collection The Rose, the speaker tells his beloved
that when she is old she should “take down this
book, / And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
/ Your eyes had once” (ll. 3–5). In the next stanza,
he explains that although many have loved this
woman, only he has loved her “pilgrim soul” and
“loved the sorrows” of her face (ll. 8, 9). It is thus
a deep love he held for her, but the poem ends by
telling “how Love fled” and “hid his face amid a
crowd of stars” (ll. 11–12). From these lines, the
reader understands that the love the speaker felt for
the woman was not likely reciprocated, or their love
affair not long-lived.
The sadness that tinges “When You Are Old”
persists into other poems, such as “No Second Troy”
(1910), in which Yeats describes a man’s frustration
with a woman he loves. He notes how she “filled my
days / With misery” (ll. 1–2), and he describes her
as having a mind “That nobleness made simple as