A Dream of Death

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1892from The Rose12 lines

I dreamed that one had died in a strange placeNear no accustomed hand;And they had nailed the boards above her face,The peasants of that land,Wondering to lay her in that solitude,And raised above her moundA cross they had made out of two bits of wood,And planted cypress round;And left her to the indifferent stars aboveUntil I carved these words:She was more beautiful than thy first love,But now lies under boards.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

The poet dreams of his beloved buried alone in a foreign land.

The speaker dreams that a woman has died "in a strange place", far from anyone who knew her. Local peasants, puzzled at burying a stranger so alone, nail the coffin boards over her face, raise a mound, set up a rough wooden cross and plant cypress trees. Then they leave her to "the indifferent stars". Only the poet marks her grave, with a two-line epitaph that sets her beauty beside the plain fact of death: she was lovelier than your first love, "But now lies under boards".

Lines to remember

She was more beautiful than thy first love,

But now lies under boards.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 8A stranger's burial
She dies "Near no accustomed hand", among strangers. The details are plain and physical: "nailed the boards above her face", a cross made "out of two bits of wood", cypress planted round. The peasants are kind but "Wondering", unable to know who she was.
Lines 9 to 12The epitaph
She is left "to the indifferent stars above" until the poet carves his words. The epitaph speaks to any passer-by: "She was more beautiful than thy first love, / But now lies under boards." The flat word "boards" brings her beauty down to earth with a shock.

Themes

Death and beauty

The poem turns on the gap between the woman's beauty and the bare facts of burial. "She was more beautiful than thy first love" is the highest praise; "But now lies under boards" is the plainest end. The rough cross and nailed boards stress how little beauty counts for in the grave.

Loneliness

She dies "in a strange place / Near no accustomed hand", buried by strangers "in that solitude" and left to "indifferent stars". Only the poet, arriving in the dream, gives her a memorial, in the words he carves. Love outlasts the lonely death, if only as an inscription.

Context

The poem first appeared in The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics (1892), among the lyrics Yeats later grouped as "The Rose". It is usually connected with Maud Gonne, whom Yeats loved from 1889: he is said to have written it when she was away in France and unwell, imagining her dying far from home. Its epitaph shape looks ahead to the carved words at the end of his late poem, "Under Ben Bulben".

Form

One twelve-line stanza that alternates long lines of five beats with short lines of three, rhymed ABAB throughout ("place" and "face", "hand" and "land"). The short lines give each image a sharp close, and the last short line, "But now lies under boards", lands like a blow.