Coming Down Through Somerset

Then the sun again.

Walking like a torn-out eye. How strangely
He stays on into the dawn---how quiet
The dark bear-claws, the long frost-tipped guard hairs!
Get rid of that badger today.
And already the flies.
More passionate, bringing their friends. I don’t want
To bury and waste him. Or skin him (it is too late).
Or hack off his head and boil it
To liberate his masterpiece skull. I want him
To stay as he is.
(The beauty of a dead beast can overcome restrains of time)
(Poet’s own destiny can be compared to that of the beast)

Fern Hill
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
 The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

The poem celebrates the actual Fern Hill farm in west Wales where Thomas used
to spend his summer holidays as a schoolboy. Thomas is saying goodbye to the
farm of his youth. The poem puts the poet’s ever-present death theme into a
balance with life.
(Poet’s attitude towards nature)
With its green grass and apple boughs Fern Hill is described as an idyllic, Eden-like
place where the poet was young and careless. He felt like a prince of apple town
and a lord walking down the trails of daisies and barley. Time was merciful to him
in those days, as it gave him the opportunity to play, hail, climb and be both
huntsman and the herdsman.
The poet describes how day and night looked like in Fernhill farm. The night turns
into a lovely morning when everything starts afresh. The line ‘I ran my heedless
ways’ suggests that he cared about nothing, he was innocent as a lamb and
couldn’t have predicted that one day he would wake and find ‘ farm forever fled
from the childless land’. Now that he is mature, the green apples that were on the
boughs are fallen, indicating that he also has fallen by growing up.
In the last stanza time is taking the young boy by the hand up to the loft where
the swallows are gathering to depart at the end of the summer, symbolic of the
end an era, the end of childhood. This takes place in the moon and not in the sun.
In his memory the moon always seemed to be rising in the early evening before he
went to sleep, but there is also the sense the passing of years. For time takes him
by the shadow of his hand, and as years go by we sometimes feel as a mere
shadow of our former selves.
Time is not merciful to him anymore, but he never stops singing no matter how
old, dying or constrained he is. He is chained by time like the sea is chained by the
moon which pulls the water. The only way to conquer time is by remembering
past.
(Poet’s understanding of childhood vs. present)
This poem celebrates the simple joys of childhood and gently mourns the erosion
of such ecstasy as adulthood corrupts the innocence with passage of time. This is
one of the most sensory poems – we can see the places Dylan recalls, hear the
sounds, share the elation and dreams, feel the sun, notice the colours and fruit –
we can lament the passing of our own childhood.
Dylan knows that all adults share one common experience at least – we were all
once children, we were all once delighted. None of us as children ever valued
those fleeting pleasures within a greater whole.
Nostalgic recollection of a child’s farm holiday is the leaping-off point of the poem,
but once launched – so intense and poignant a memory overtakes the poet, that
his words convey more than a merely topographical homesickness.
In actual poetic terms, we have experienced the states of innocence and eternity,
and been subjected to corruption, time and change. An elegy in praise of lost
youth, celebration in the beginning, and lament as the poem progresses – Fern Hill
is all of these.
The poem describes Thomas’ youthful years spent on his aunt and uncle’s farm
while his aunt Ann Jones was still alive. When he was on this farm, he had long
existence ahead – he was the lord and the ruler on the farm, hunter of wild
animals. He was happy, carefree, innocent, his days were happy and the nights full
of sounds. Very musical poem.
Through the images of nature poet expresses his feelings and memories of his
childhood. The poet was huntsman and herdsman, he could be whatever he
wanted to be. He feels childhood as a deep part of him; it feels like he died,
although he’s alive. He wants to celebrate the life process totally.

Vers de Société (1971)

My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps

To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You'd care to join us? In a pig's arse, friend.
 Day comes to an end.
The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I'm afraid --
Funny how hard it is to be alone
I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted,
Holding a glass of washing sherry, canted
Over to catch the drivel of some bitch
Who's read nothing but Which;
Just think of all the spare time that has flown
Straight into nothingness by being filled
With forks and faces, rather than repaid
Under a lamp, hearing the noise of wind,
And looking out to see the moon thinned
To an air-sharpened blade.
A life, and yet how sternly it's instilled
All solitude is selfish. No one now
Believes the hermit with his gown and dish
Talking to God (who's gone too); the big wish
Is to have people nice to you, which means
Doing it back somehow.
Virtue is social. Are, then, these routines
Playing at good, like going to church?
Something that bores us, something we don't do well
(Asking that ass about his fool research)
But try to feel, because, however crudely,
It shows us what should be?
Too subtle, that. Too decent, too. Oh hell,
Only the young can be alone freely.
The time is shorter now for company,
And sitting by a lamp more often brings
Not peace, but other things.
Beyond the light stand failure and remorse
Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course –

(Isolation as a self-imposed banishment from social communication)

Here Larkin contemplates the issues of work, idleness, freedom and isolation. He is
convinced that freedom from work and isolation bring "...not peace but other
things".
Isolation can be dangerous; it can lead us to the state in which we become
preoccupied with questions we do not have answers to. That is why isolation can be
hard and difficult, because one completely turns to oneself, closes oneself to a
separate world that is only theirs. There is no dayliness, no routine, or those
repetitive structures that keep our mind distracted from such abstract thinking. One
starts thinking of all the time that has flown into nothingness, flies into the absurdity
of everything that makes life. Larkin tells that all solitude is selfish, because one
turns only to himself/herself and their worries, and they need others to be nice to
their potentially good and wounded self.
It seems that our isolation can determine the level of our social availability. When
we sit in the dark, under the lamp, we try to repair the time and our past with forks
and knives, as if we are cutting or shaping a piece of cake. We try to reshape, to
give new significance to past events, and so we neglect the present and let the time
pass.
He says that only young can be alone freely, because they have time to be alone, to
sit idle under the lamp. Tomorrow is in front of them. Their loneliness is not as
heavy as his or as the loneliness of the old, who do not have time. However, even
the young have to be careful not to sit TOO idle under the lamp, because life will
not wait for anyone.
(The lack of real emotional involvement with the opposite sex)

Thomas delighted to dwell on childhood because he believed that children have no

consciousness of being separate from the world.

I Remember, I Remember (1954)

Coming up England by a different line
For once, early in the cold new year,
We stopped, and, watching men with number plates
Sprint down the platform to familiar gates,
'Why, Coventry!' I exclaimed. "I was born here.'
I leant far out, and squinted for a sign
That this was still the town that had been 'mine'
So long, but found I wasn't even clear
Which side was which. From where those cycle-crates
Were standing, had we annually departed
For all those family hols? . . . A whistle went:
Things moved. I sat back, staring at my boots.
'Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?'
No, only where my childhood was unspent,
I wanted to retort, just where I started:
By now I've got the whole place clearly charted.
Our garden, first: where I did not invent
Blinding theologies of flowers and fruits,
And wasn't spoken to by an old hat.
And here we have that splendid family
I never ran to when I got depressed,
The boys all biceps and the girls all chest,
Their comic Ford, their farm where I could be
'Really myself'. I'll show you, come to that,
 The bracken where I never trembling sat,
Determined to go through with it; where she
Lay back, and 'all became a burning mist'.
And, in those offices, my poetry
Was not set up in blunt ten-point, nor read
By a distinguished cousin of the mayor,
Who didn't call and tell my father There
Before us, had we the gift to see ahead -
'You look as though you wished the place in Hell,'
My friend said, 'judging from your face.' 'Oh well,
I suppose it's not the place's fault,' I said.
'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'

(Aspects of childhood on poet’s mind)

This is reference to an 'unspent' childhood. It was written in January 1954 after
Larkin's stopping unexpectedly in a train at Coventry, the town where he was born
and lived for the first eighteen years of his life. In it the persona adopts a
deterministic view of life whereby 'something hidden from us' destroys all attempts
we make consciously to control our lives and seize our happiness.
The poem lists, rather satirically, a lot of things that happened during the time,
and ends: 'You look as though... 'I said. Nothing... anywhere' . It was not meant to
mock Coventry, or to suggest that it was, or is, a dull place to live in, or that I now
remember it with dislike or indifference, or even cannot remember it at all.'
(“Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.”)
There is a desire to stress the ordinariness of life. This poem is a kind of comic
catalogue of the kinds of character and environment Larkin hadn't had. It started
as a satire on the 'artist's childhood' sort of novel like 'Sons and Lovers' - the kind
of wonderful childhoods that people do seem to have, but ended by expressing
something Larkin realized he felt deeply.
Time destroys us and corrodes any meaning we attach to our lives by its
dangerous attack upon purpose and intention. Yet we are also time's accomplices
in the sense that we ourselves employ time as an instrument with which to deceive
ourselves. It is us that use time as a comfort; it is us who allow ourselves the hope
that in time all shall be well, that in time all our purposes will be accomplished.
The rhyme scheme is a nine-line scheme whereas the stanza is a five-line scheme.
At the end there is one line left over, which is there for the rhyme.

Church Going (1954)

Once I am sure there's nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come

To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
 Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

This poem could be said to represent a search for a more positive view of life. It
begins with the concrete experience of the poet, which lends an air of personal
conviction to the whole poem through its carefully chosen details of scene and
behaviour: 1st stanza ‘...in awkward reverence...'
The first two stanzas describe an actual visit made by the poet. In the remaining
part of the poem it is the other side of the title's meaning explored -the
implications of the church in decline and the underlying meaning of what the
church has traditionally stood for and might be made to stand for in a secular
future.
(Twentieth century redefined old traditions and values)
The third stanza begins these speculations, wondering whether churches will
become merely museums, 'A few cathedrals chronically on show, / Their
parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases', or will be left to moulder as ruins,
'let...rent-free to rain and sheep', or will become haunted places, avoided as
unlucky or the secret centre of superstitious cults, or will be ravaged by 'Some
ruin-bibber, randy for antique' - a well-informed expert, a lover of antiquarian, or a
lover of ritual (all described mockingly, in casual diction).
The poet assumes that religion is in decline and that we shall soon see the last
churchgoer to seek ironic catalogue of possible future visitors is replaced by
serious questioning. Will there always be someone who, like the poet himself,
cannot help but stop because although they are 'bored, uninformed and know the
old institutionalized religion is dead, nevertheless come ‘...to this cross of ground /
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt / So long… / This special shell?’
The image of suburban scrubland and the suggestion of the church traditionally
holding 'unspilt' the sense of the importance of those moments in our life which
dedicate us to greater goodness together imply the bare, desolate landscape of
modern spiritual life and the metaphorical spilling of our precious lifeblood. Without
the church, it seems, our lives lack a focus for our most serious concerns.
(Nature will, eventually prevail over the edifices of civilisation)
By the last stanza a case has been asserted, suggesting that, despite the desire of
this rational age to debunk all religious impulses, human nature will continue to
require some kind of focus for those most serious and deeply felt times in our life
(such as birth, marriage and death). The language of the last lines soars to an
elevated and solemn realm: the last stanza.
There is a calm, solemn and dignified conclusion - the word 'serious' is three times
repeated. There is also an interesting thing about the word 'serious' - in the last
century it had the meaning 'religious'. The language is almost stately ( 'robed as
destinies', 'gravitating', 'proper to grow wise in' ) and the cadence and rhythm give
a supporting solemnity, strength and seriousness. It is a remarkable development
from the colloquial idiom and concrete particulars of the opening description and is
effected without the slightest strain. This conclusion is an affirmation of the
importance of the central events of our lives and the need for them to be
celebrated by some centre for a community with its rituals and traditional
memorials.
Larkin himself says that in this poem he is concerned 'with going to church, not
religion. I tried to suggest this by the title - and the union of the important stages
of human life - birth, marriage and death - that going to church represents.' It
describes a strictly secular faith. 'Church Going’ has been taken fairly generally as a
kind of 'representative attitude' poem, standing for a whole disheartened,
debunking state of mind in post-war England.
Letter to Lord Byron (excerpts) – 3rd part
The important point to notice, though, is this:
Each poet knew for whom he had to write,
Because their life was still the same as his.
As long as art remains a parasite,
On any class of persons it's alright;
The only thing it must be is attendant,
The only thing it mustn't is independent.
But artists, though, are human; and for man
To be a scivvy is not nice at all:
So everyone will do the best he can
 To get a patch of ground which he can call
His own. He really doesn't care how small,
So long as he can style himself the master:
Unluckily for art, it's a disaster.

(Modern times have a particular approach to poetry)

(Poets have never stopped yearning for eternal fame)

Dover 1937
Soldiers crowd into the pubs in their pretty clothes,
As pink and silly girls from a high-class academy;
The Lion, The Rose, The Crown, will not ask them to die,
Not here, not now: all they are killing is time,
A pauper civilian future.
Above them, expensive, shiny as a rich boy's bike,
Aeroplanes drone through the new European air
On t:he edge of a sky that makes England of minor importance;
And tides warn bronzing bathers of a cooling star
With half its history done.

(The contrast between the current situation and history of a place)

Dover is one of the poems which depend upon its accumulated sociological
analysis of the spirit of the frontier town. Why "frontier town"? Because, if we take
a look of the map of Great Britain, we see that Dover is right on the coast, the
point where the island of Great Britain is closest to the European continent. On the
opposite side of the sea is the French Calais. If you want to travel to Europe, this is
the place where you have to come. That Dover is at the coast is visible from the
first stanza where the narrator says "sea-front..." This function of Dover as a
frontier town enables Auden to turn it into a symbol of how man exists in time, as
a traveller, facing the future and the past, a victim of forces outside his control.
Truth and falsehood go everywhere and travelling discovers nothing. The city is full
of travellers and soldiers. "Vows, tears, emotional farewells are usual for this town
since all the time someone is leaving it: "the eyes of the migrants are fixed on the
sea". But there are also those who come and we see that in line "the eyes of
homecomers thank these historical cliffs"... Soldiers are there to guard the English
coast - soldiers "whom ships carry in or between the lighthouses, which guard
forever the made privacy of this bay. There is also description of the town with a
"Norman castle", "the Old Town with its Keep and Georgian houses"... There is no
war yet, so the soldiers are just killing time and guarding the travellers. In the end
we see this theme of man being as a traveller when he says that "each prays in a
similar way but neither controls the years or the weather", possibly meaning we
are all equal when it comes to destiny. We all have the destiny of our own, and
some things we cannot control. (Ordinary people may (not) eventually
become war heroes)

Coole Park and Ballyllee, 1931

(from The Winding Stair and Other Poems, 1933)

I
Under my window-ledge the waters race,
Otters below and moor-hens on the top,
Run for a mile undimmed in Heaven's face
Then darkening through 'dark' Raftery's 'cellar' drop,
Run underground, rise in a rocky place
In Coole demesne, and there to finish up
Spread to a lake and drop into a hole.
What's water but the generated soul?
II
Upon the border of that lake's a wood
Now all dry sticks under a wintry sun,
And in a copse of beeches there I stood,
For Nature's pulled her tragic buskin on
And all the rant's a mirror of my mood:
At sudden thunder of the mounting swan
I turned about and looked where branches break
The glittering reaches of the flooded lake.
III
Another emblem there! That stormy white
But seems a concentration of the sky;
And, like the soul, it sails into the sight
And in the morning's gone, no man knows why;
And is so lovely that it sets to right
What knowledge or its lack had set awry,
So atrogantly pure, a child might think
It can be murdered with a spot of ink.
IV
Sound of a stick upon the floor, a sound
From somebody that toils from chair to chair;
Beloved books that famous hands have bound,
Old marble heads, old pictures everywhere;
Great rooms where travelled men and children found
Content or joy; a last inheritor
Where none has reigned that lacked a name and fame
Or out of folly into folly came.
V
A spot whereon the founders lived and died
Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees,
Or gardens rich in memory glorified
Marriages, alliances and families,
And every bride's ambition satisfied.
Where fashion or mere fantasy decrees
We shift about - all that great glory spent -
Like some poor Arab tribesman and his tent.
VI
We were the last romantics - chose for theme
Traditional sanctity and loveliness;
Whatever's written in what poets name
The book of the people; whatever most can bless
The mind of man or elevate a rhyme;
But all is changed, that high horse riderless,
Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode
Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood.
 (The connection between the nature and age)
Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931, from the collection The Winding Stair and
Other Poems (1933), is both a celebration of Yeats’ friend Lady Gregory
and a lamentation for the passing of a more gracious age. It is set on Lady
Gregory’s estate Coole Park where Yeats spent a greater part of his later
life. For Yeats this is an isolated place, a pocket of aristocratic grace
holding out against modern chaos.
(The contrast between the two opposed images of the soul)
The poem is held together by a symbolism based on water, winter trees
and a white swan. The water symbolism is perhaps easiest to grasp. The
river racing past the poet’s tower at Ballylee is captured by the lively
movement of the first stanza, and Yeats’s effective use of alliteration. The
last line of the first stanza summarises the Neoplatonic belief in water as a
symbol of generation. For Yeats water is an emblem for the soul’s progress
out of light (life) into darkness (death) and again into light (reincarnation).
The swan which appears in the third stanza serves as a symbol of
inspiration. Yeats sees the swan as the artist who, dying, sings into fading
light. The swan, thus, becomes another emblem for the soul. Having
presented two opposed images for the soul, Yeats contrasts the barren
winter wood to Coole’s world of “ancestral trees” and “gardens rich in
memory”. The winter trees are identified with sterile, modern times. In the
final stanza, Yeats connects all this symbolism with literature. He claims
that the kind of literature to which he has been committed is at a mercy of
change. He is the last Romantic.

A Prayer for My Daughter

(from Michael Robartes and the Dancer, 1921)
 I That chooses right, and
Once more the storm is
howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood
and coverlid
My child sleeps on.
There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood
and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack-
and roof-levelling wind.
Bred on the Atlantic,
can be stayed;
And for an hour I have
walked and prayed
Because of the great
gloom that is in my
mind.
II
I have walked and prayed
for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-
wind scream upon the
tower,
And-under the arches
of the bridge, and
scream
In the elms above the
flooded stream;
Imagining in excited
reverie
That the future years
had come,
Dancing to a frenzied
drum,
Out of the murderous
innocence of the sea.
III
May she be granted
beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a
stranger's eye
distraught,
Or hers before a
looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful
overmuch,
Consider beauty a
sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness
and maybe
The heart-revealing
intimacy
Rooted in one dear X
never find a friend. perpetual place. And may her
IV VII bridegroom bring her
Helen being chosen My mind, because the to a house
found life flat and dull minds that I have Where all's
And later had much loved, accustomed,
trouble from a fool, The sort of beauty that ceremonious;
While that great I have approved, For arrogance and
Queen, that rose out of Prosper but little, has hatred are the wares
the spray, dried up of late, Peddled in the
Being fatherless could Yet knows that to be thoroughfares.
have her way choked with hate How but in custom and
Yet chose a bandy- May well be of all evil in ceremony
leggèd smith for man. chances chief. Are innocence and
It's certain that fine If there's no hatred in a beauty born?
women eat mind Ceremony's a name for
A crazy salad with their Assault and battery of the rich horn,
meat the wind And custom for the
Whereby the Horn of Can never tear the spreading laurel tree.
plenty is undone. linnet from the leaf.
V VIII
In courtesy I'd have An intellectual hatred is
her chiefly learned; the worst,
Hearts are not had as a So let her think
gift but hearts are opinions are accursed.
earned Have I not seen the
By those that are not loveliest woman born
entirely beautiful; Out of the mouth of
Yet many, that have plenty's horn,
played the fool Because of her
For beauty's very self, opinionated mind
has charm made wise. Barter that horn and
And many a poor man every good
that has roved, By quiet natures
Loved and thought understood
himself beloved, For an old bellows full
From a glad kindness of angry wind?
cannot take his eyes. IX
VI Considering that, all
May she become a hatred driven hence,
flourishing hidden tree The soul recovers
That all her thoughts radical innocence
may like the linnet be, And learns at last that
And have no business it is self-delighting,
but dispensing round Self-appeasing, self-
Their magnanimities of affrighting,
sound, And that its own sweet
Nor but in merriment will is Heaven's will;
begin a chase, She can, though every
Nor but in merriment a face should scowl
quarrel. And every windy
O may she live like quarter howl
some green laurel Or every bellows burst,
be happy Still.
I While the storm is bred on the Atlantic, the poet is watching his infant daughter Anne sleep
and he prays for her, with a gloom in his mind vis-à-vis her future juxtaposed to the dark and
gloomy weather outside.

II He dreads, but is also excited with, the approaching storm as well as the coming apocalyptic
era; auditive impressions of the wind and rhythm intensification; oxymoron “murderous
innocence of the sea” resembles “terrible beauty” from Easter, 1916.

III He prays for her to be beautiful but not too much, considers the beauty a decisive element for
choosing the right spouse, emphasizes that too much beauty may cause her to lose the
"natural kindness" and thus prevent her from finding the "heart-revealing intimacy" and a true
friend.
(Intellectual beauty is preferred over physical appearance)
IV Beautiful women make unwise choices thereby undoing the Horn of Plenty (goat’s horn Zeus
gave to his stepmother in return for the goat’s milk, symbol of abundance) they were granted:
the chosen Helen with her husband Menelaus, whom she deserted in favour of Paris, and
fatherless Aphrodite with her crippled Hephaestus/Vulcan, hinting also at his own Helen -
Maud Gonne with her husband whom he called “an intellectual pygmy”. Yeats intends to be a
guiding father to his young daughter.

V Learned courtesy and kindness are contrasted with the congenital beauty, attaching
foolishness to the excess of beauty, stressing that many a men who hopelessly loved beautiful
women and thought they loved them back end up irresistibly drawn to glad kindness instead.

VI He hopes that his daughter would flourish yet remain unexposed, containing her happiness
within a particular place, in a sense of harmony and restraint. He also wants her to be
moderate and grow up gradually like linnet without excess, without violence. Ideally she
should live a victorious, accomplished life, and not move away from her class.

VII He illustrates his own suffering from unrequited love of beauty and emphasizes the
destructiveness of hatred in response; in absence of your hatred no one can destabilize you.

VIII Don’t get opinionated; opinions made Maud Gonne reject him, even turned her into an
imprisoned propagandist and a desolate wife – just like the other mythological beauties, who
came out of the Horn of Plenty, were born out of the shell, out of no womb, out of
immaculate conception - she abused her abundance, destroyed other people’s lives

IX With hatred removed and innocence restored in the soul, she would have control over her life
and learn to remain happy still in spite of the troubles or obstacles she may face.
(Innocence and beauty are born in custom and in ceremony)
X In the conclusion stanza Yeats prays that his daughter should marry with proper ceremonies
into a traditional marriage to a well-established family and house, which holds no arrogance or
hatred, as innocence and beauty can stem only from custom and ceremony which he finally
links to the symbols of laurel tree and rich horn. Yeats clearly used the upper-class language
except when referring to the negative images of “goods sold in the market” in the language of
commons, possibly suggesting that you have to have class and money to be innocent and
beautiful.

The poet wants his daughter to become a woman who is virtuous and wise. He uses the image of his
daughter partly to represent his ideal woman. Most of the images that he uses are parts of the ideal
woman he has in his mind or its opposites. He supports that a woman should be a flourishing hidden
tree, who is not well-known but beautiful. She shouldn't be anything but merry. Innocence is beautiful
in women, that's why if his daughter keeps her innocence inside and do not abuse it, she will not be
affected by the “wind”.

He thinks that too much beauty distorts women, and causes them to destroy the gifts that are given
by the Horn of Plenty thus he wants his daughter to use the gifts wisely and properly. And he wants
his daughter to learn the fact that hearts are earned, and that men deceived by mere beauty are
bound realize their mistake. He wants her not to have strong opinions or hatred which he finds the
worst thing in the world. He hopes she would marry in proper ceremony to a house of customs, rid of
arrogance and hatred, where innocence and beauty can be born.

The poem structure is not complex to analyze:

o it has 10 stanzas 8 lines each
o it was written in iambic pentameter
o the rhyme scheme is AABBCDDC
o the rhythm is regular

The language used in the poem is similar to the language used in lectures and prayers. Frequent use
of modal "may" as well as other subjunctive and conditional verb forms give the poem an overall
prayer-like mood.

The moods in all stanzas differ from each other:

I. frightening atmosphere
II. anxiety about what the future would bring
III. same but also careful
IV. use of classical mythology to express obsessions
V. a little bit more confident and hopeful
VI. more cautious and negative
VII. self-aware, strong and a kind of regretful
VIII. the last three stanzas are in a happy mood with hopefulness

Poetic devices include:

1) Onomatopoeia- use of words that sound like their referent: howling, scream, spray, choke,
scowl, howl
2) Repetition- frequent use of word-items: self-appeasing, self-
delighting, self-affrighting in stanza IX
3) Alliteration- repetition of the initial sound in several adjacent words:
howling half hid, cradle-hood coverlid, great gloom, sea-wind scream, being made beautiful, like
the linnet, live like, linnet from the leaf, hatred driven hence, recovers radical, bellows burst,
bridegroom bring, find a friend
4) Assonance- grouping together words with similar vowel sounds:
walked and prayed, young-hour, such-overmuch, trouble- fool, with-meat, yet-that-played, beauty-
very, poor-roved, loved-thought-beloved, hidden-tree, dried-late, linnet-leaf, should-scowl,
quarter-bowl, hatred-wares, spreading laurel tree

The narrator is the poet's himself, and tells the poem quite personally, using possessives "I", "she",
"my daughter".
Figures of speech include:
1. Metaphor
o ceremony is used for the Plenty's horn
o custom is used for the spreading laurel tree
 o linnet is used for good faith
o laurel is used for having a victorious life
2. Personification
o sea-wind scream -human being
o years...dancing -human being
o frenzied drum - human being
o angry wind - human being
3. Simile
o all her thoughts may like the linnet be
o may she live like some green laurel
4. Juxtaposition
o murderous innocence oxymoron
5. Imagery
o the storm representing the dangerous outside forces or the future she was soon to
encounter
o the cradle representing his daughter's babyhood
o the sea is the source of the wind and logically the source of future years as well
o murderous innocence is attributed to the sea and represents poet's daughter and the
outside world which awaits her
o dried for his mind to explain how bad ideas are rooted in his mind.
o the horn as ceremony
o the tree as custom