A Friend's Illness

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1910from The Green Helmet and Other Poems7 lines

Sickness brought me thisThought, in that scale of his:Why should I be dismayedThough flame had burned the wholeWorld, as it were a coal,Now I have seen it weighedAgainst a soul?

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

In brief

Summary

A friend's illness teaches that one soul outweighs the whole world.

Seven short lines built on one thought. Sickness, pictured holding a pair of scales, has taught the speaker something. He has seen the whole world weighed against a single soul, and the soul was heavier. So even the burning of the world like a coal need not dismay him. Fear for one person has made the world itself look small.

Lines to remember

Why should I be dismayed

Against a soul?

Line by line

Lines 1 to 2Sickness's scales
Sickness is personified as a figure holding "that scale of his", a balance for weighing things. The friend's illness has brought the speaker a "Thought", and the line break leaves that word standing at the start of line 2.
Lines 3 to 7World against soul
The thought: there is no cause for dismay even if flame "had burned the whole" world "as it were a coal", now that he has seen the world weighed against one soul. The poem ends on its shortest line, "Against a soul?", giving the soul the final weight.

Themes

The worth of a soul

The central image is a pair of scales, with the world on one side and a soul on the other. The world, for all its size, is "as it were a coal", something that can burn away. The idea echoes the Gospel question of what it profits a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul.

Illness and perspective

Fear for a friend has changed the speaker's sense of proportion. The destruction of the world might once have seemed the worst thing imaginable; now the thought of losing one person weighs more. The poem finds an odd comfort in the illness: it has shown him what matters.

Context

The poem was first collected in The Green Helmet and Other Poems (Cuala Press, 1910). The friend is usually identified as Lady Gregory, who was seriously ill in 1909, when Yeats feared he would lose her. It sits in the collection beside other poems of loyalty to her and to her house at Coole.

Form

Seven short lines rhymed AABCCBC ("this" and "his", "dismayed" and "weighed", "whole", "coal" and "soul"). Most lines have three beats; the last has only two. The sentence spills across the short lines ("the whole" runs on into "World"), and the three rhymes on "whole", "coal" and "soul" ring towards the final word.