A Stick of Incense
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1939. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2035, and this site is served partly from American servers. So for now we give the notes without the full text; it will appear here in 2035.
It begins: Whence did all that fury come?
In brief
SummaryA sly quatrain on the origins of Christianity's fury.
Four lines, two questions and a joke. Where did all the fury of the Christian age come from, the poem asks: from the empty tomb of the Resurrection or from the Virgin's womb? It then turns to Saint Joseph, who thought the world was about to melt away, yet liked the way his finger smelt. The grand theological question ends in an earthy, teasing detail, and the title's stick of incense hangs over it all.
Lines to remember
But liked the way his finger smelt.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 4Tomb, womb and Joseph
The opening couplet asks whether the energy of Christianity sprang from the Resurrection or the Virgin Birth. The second brings in Joseph, expecting the end of the world, but pleased by the smell on his finger. Whether that is the scent of incense or something more bodily is left, mischievously, to the reader.
Themes
Sacred and bodily
The poem sets the loftiest Christian mysteries, tomb and womb, beside a small physical pleasure. Joseph's sense of smell pulls the scene down to earth. As in the Crazy Jane poems, Yeats insists that the spirit cannot be separated from the body.
The Christian era
"Fury" is a strong word for the birth of a religion. Yeats saw Christianity as one great age in the cycles of history, arriving with violence and energy. Joseph's belief that the world would melt suggests the end-of-days feeling of its beginnings.
Context
The poem was first published in Last Poems and Two Plays (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1939). It belongs with other late pieces that treat the Christian story irreverently or strangely, such as "A Nativity" and the Supernatural Songs of A Full Moon in March (1935).
Form
Four four-beat lines in two couplets (come and womb, a half rhyme; melt and smelt). The first couplet is two questions; the second answers with a story, and the neat, comic final rhyme undercuts the solemnity of the start.