A Song

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1919from The Wild Swans at Coole18 lines

I thought no more was neededYouth to prolongThan dumb-bell and foilTo keep the body young.Oh, who could have foretoldThat the heart grows old?

Though I have many words,What woman’s satisfied,I am no longer faintBecause at her side?Oh, who could have foretoldThat the heart grows old?

I have not lost desireBut the heart that I had;I thought ’twould burn my bodyLaid on the death-bed.But who could have foretoldThat the heart grows old?

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

In brief

Summary

An ageing man finds that exercise keeps the body young, not the heart.

The speaker once believed that exercise, "dumb-bell and foil", was all it took to stay young. He has kept his body fit, but something he never expected has happened: his heart has aged. He still has plenty of words, and he has not lost desire, but he no longer feels faint with passion beside a woman, and he knows that no woman is satisfied by words alone. Each stanza ends with the same rueful surprise: "who could have foretold / That the heart grows old?"

Lines to remember

That the heart grows old?

I have not lost desire

Line by line

Lines 1 to 6Dumb-bell and foil
He thought weights and fencing practice would keep him young. The plain, slightly comic detail of "dumb-bell and foil" makes the refrain land harder: the body can be trained, but "the heart grows old" by its own clock.
Lines 7 to 12No longer faint
He can still talk well, "Though I have many words", but asks what woman is content with a lover who is "no longer faint" at her side. The faintness of young passion, once a weakness, now looks like the thing that mattered.
Lines 13 to 18Desire without heart
The last stanza makes the distinction exact: he has "not lost desire", only the heart he had. He had expected that heart to burn in him even on his "death-bed". The refrain now opens with "But" instead of "Oh", turning surprise into a quieter, sadder admission.

Themes

Ageing

The poem splits age in two. The body can be kept "young" by effort, but the heart ages anyway, and nothing in the first stanza's regime of "dumb-bell and foil" can stop it. The refrain repeats the shock three times, as if he cannot quite get used to it.

Desire and passion

The poem draws a fine line between desire, which remains, and the heart, which has gone. What he misses is the old helplessness of love, being "faint" at a woman's side. Words are no substitute: "What woman's satisfied" with talk alone. Passion, the poem suggests, is less about wanting than about being overwhelmed.

Context

"A Song" was one of the poems added to The Wild Swans at Coole when Macmillan published the enlarged collection in 1919; the first, smaller edition had come from the Cuala Press in 1917. Yeats was in his early fifties, and the book returns again and again to age, lost youth and the question of what survives them. This poem treats the subject lightly, as a song, while its neighbours treat it with more weight.

Form

Three six-line stanzas in short lines of two or three beats. The second and fourth lines half-rhyme ("prolong" and "young", "satisfied" and "side", "had" and "death-bed"), and each stanza ends on the same rhymed refrain. The song-like brevity keeps the regret light on the surface, which makes it sharper underneath.