A Poet to his Beloved

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1899from The Wind Among the Reeds8 lines

I bring you with reverent handsThe books of my numberless dreams;White woman that passion has wornAs the tide wears the dove-grey sands,And with heart more old than the hornThat is brimmed from the pale fire of time:White woman with numberless dreamsI bring you my passionate rhyme.

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

In brief

Summary

A poet offers his dreams and verses to a woman worn by passion.

The poet brings the woman he loves "The books of my numberless dreams", carried "with reverent hands" like an offering at a shrine. He describes her as a "White woman" worn by passion as the tide wears grey sand, with a heart older than a horn filled from "the pale fire of time". The poem ends by repeating its gift in plainer words: "I bring you my passionate rhyme." It is a short poem of homage in which the poet's own work is the gift.

Lines to remember

I bring you with reverent hands

I bring you my passionate rhyme.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 2The offering
He comes "with reverent hands", the language of worship, bringing "The books of my numberless dreams". His poems are the gift, and dream and book are the same thing.
Lines 3 to 6White woman
Passion has worn her as the tide wears "the dove-grey sands", slowly and constantly. Her heart is older than "the horn" filled "from the pale fire of time", a mysterious image of age and depth, like a sacred drinking horn.
Lines 7 to 8My passionate rhyme
The last lines echo the first. "Numberless dreams" returns, now hers rather than his, and "I bring you" returns with a plainer gift, "my passionate rhyme". Her passion and his are matched.

Themes

Poetry as gift

The whole poem is an act of giving. It begins and ends with "I bring you", and what he brings is books, dreams and rhyme. He has nothing else to offer, and the poem treats verse as the lover's best present, carried "with reverent hands" as if to an altar.

Passion and time

The woman is marked by passion as a shore is marked by the tide: "passion has worn" her. Her heart is compared to an ancient horn "brimmed from the pale fire of time". She seems ageless and weary at once, a figure of deep feeling rather than a portrait of a particular person.

Context

The poem was collected in The Wind Among the Reeds (Elkin Mathews, London, 1899). Unlike many poems in the book it never carried a persona's name, and it kept its title. Its hushed, ritual tone, pale colours and devotion to "the books of my numberless dreams" are typical of the collection. The "White woman" is not named, and the poem is best read as a poem of homage rather than a portrait.

Form

Eight short lines of three beats, rhymed abcacdbd ("hands", "dreams", "worn", "sands", "horn", "time", "dreams", "rhyme"). Line 2's "dreams" is answered by the same word in line 7, and "I bring you" opens both the first and last lines, so the poem closes round on itself like a ring.