All Souls' Night

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1922from The Tower100 lines

An Epilogue to A Vision

Midnight has come and the great Christ Church Bell,And may a lesser bell, sound through the room;And it is All Souls’ Night,And two long glasses brimmed with muscatelBubble upon the table. A ghost may come;For it is a ghost’s right,His element is so fineBeing sharpened by his death,To drink from the wine-breathWhile our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

I need some mind that, if the cannon soundFrom every quarter of the world, can stayWound in mind’s pondering,As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;Because I have a marvellous thing to say,A certain marvellous thingNone but the living mock,Though not for sober ear;It may be all that hearShould laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

H⁠⸺’s the first I call. He loved strange thoughtAnd knew that sweet extremity of prideThat’s called platonic love,And that to such a pitch of passion wroughtNothing could bring him, when his lady died,Anodyne for his love.Words were but wasted breath;One dear hope had he:The inclemencyOf that or the next winter would be death.

Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tellWhether of her or God he thought the most,But think that his mind’s eye,When upward turned, on one sole image fell;And that a slight companionable ghost,Wild with divinity,Had so lit up the wholeImmense miraculous houseThe Bible promised us,It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.

On Florence Emery I call the next,Who finding the first wrinkles on a faceAdmired and beautiful,And knowing that the future would be vexedWith ’minished beauty, multiplied commonplace,Preferred to teach a school,Away from neighbour or friendAmong dark skins, and therePermit foul years to wearHidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.

Before that end much had she ravelled outFrom a discourse in figurative speechBy some learned IndianOn the soul’s journey. How it is whirled about,Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,Until it plunge into the sun;And there, free and yet fastBeing both Chance and Choice,Forget its broken toysAnd sink into its own delight at last.

And I call up MacGregor from the grave,For in my first hard springtime we were friends,Although of late estranged.I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,And told him so, but friendship never ends;And what if mind seem changed,And it seem changed with the mind,When thoughts rise up unbidOn generous things that he didAnd I grow half contented to be blind.

He had much industry at setting out,Much boisterous courage, before lonelinessHad driven him crazed;For meditations upon unknown thoughtMake human intercourse grow less and less;They are neither paid nor praised.But he’d object to the host,The glass because my glass;A ghost-lover he wasAnd may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.

But names are nothing. What matter who it be,So that his elements have grown so fineThe fume of muscatelCan give his sharpened palate ecstasyNo living man can drink from the whole wine.I have mummy truths to tellWhereat the living mock,Though not for sober ear,For maybe all that hearShould laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

Such thought⁠—such thought have I that hold it tightTill meditation master all its parts,Nothing can stay my glanceUntil that glance run in the world’s despiteTo where the damned have howled away their hearts,And where the blessed dance;Such thought, that in it boundI need no other thingWound in mind’s wandering,As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.

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

In brief

Summary

At midnight in Oxford, Yeats calls up three dead friends to hear his thought.

It is midnight on All Souls' Night, when the dead are remembered, and the great bell of Christ Church in Oxford is sounding. Two glasses of muscatel stand on the table, one for a ghost, who can drink the fumes of wine as the living cannot. The poet has "a marvellous thing to say" and needs a listener whose mind is fixed beyond the noise of the world. He calls up three dead friends in turn: H., a mystic who loved a dead woman and longed to follow her; Florence Emery, who hid her fading beauty away by teaching in a distant school; and MacGregor, a brilliant, difficult occultist with whom he quarrelled. Then he lets the names go: any ghost fine enough will do. The poem ends on the thought itself, held so tightly that his gaze runs to the places of the damned and the blessed.

Lines to remember

Midnight has come and the great Christ Church Bell,

I have mummy truths to tell

It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 10Midnight and muscatel
The bells strike midnight on All Souls' Night, and two glasses of muscatel bubble on the table. A ghost has the right to come, the speaker says, because death has made him so fine that he can drink "the wine-breath" while the living, with their "gross palates", must drink the wine itself.
Lines 11 to 20A mind to listen
He needs a mind that could stay fixed in thought even if cannon sounded all over the world, wrapped in its own pondering "As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound". He has "a marvellous thing to say", one the living would mock, that might make listeners "laugh and weep an hour".
Lines 21 to 30The first ghost
The first friend called is H., a man of "strange thought" who knew the pride of "platonic love", a love kept apart from the body. When his lady died nothing could ease his grief, and his "One dear hope" was that the coming winter would kill him.
Lines 31 to 40A gold-fish bowl
His thoughts of the dead woman and of God were so mixed that they became one image. That "slight companionable ghost" so lit up the heaven promised in the Bible that its "Immense miraculous house" seemed as small and clear as "a gold-fish swimming in a bowl".
Lines 41 to 50Florence Emery
Next comes Florence Emery. Seeing the first wrinkles on her admired face, and dreading a future of fading beauty and "multiplied commonplace", she chose to teach a school far from neighbour and friend, and let her last years pass unseen.
Lines 51 to 60The soul's journey
Before she died she had worked out, from the teaching of "some learned Indian", how the soul is whirled through the moon's orbit until it plunges into the sun. There, "free and yet fast", it forgets its "broken toys" and sinks into its own delight.
Lines 61 to 70MacGregor
The third ghost is MacGregor, a friend from Yeats's "first hard springtime" though later estranged. Yeats had called him "half a lunatic, half knave" to his face, yet "friendship never ends", and memories of his generosity rise up unasked.
Lines 71 to 80A proud ghost
MacGregor began with energy and "boisterous courage", but lonely study of hidden things left him "crazed". Yeats imagines him refusing the offered glass simply because it is Yeats's: a lover of ghosts, perhaps grown more arrogant now that he is one.
Lines 81 to 90Any ghost will do
Now "names are nothing". Any ghost will serve whose elements have grown fine enough to find ecstasy in "The fume of muscatel". The refrain of the second stanza returns: he has "mummy truths to tell" that the living would mock.
Lines 91 to 100The thought itself
The poem closes on the thought he holds "tight" until meditation masters it. Held that way, his gaze runs beyond the world to where the damned howl "And where the blessed dance", and the mummy image from the second stanza returns to seal the poem.

Themes

The dead

The poem is a ritual of calling up the dead on the night set aside for them. Each ghost is drawn with affection and candour: H.'s consuming grief, Florence Emery's pride, MacGregor's arrogance. The dead are not idealised. They keep their faults, and Yeats even imagines MacGregor sulking over the wine.

Friendship

Each portrait is also a memory of friendship. Yeats admits old quarrels ("I thought him half a lunatic, half knave") but insists "friendship never ends". The ghosts are summoned partly as listeners and partly as companions from his "first hard springtime" in the world of mystical study.

Thought and vision

The occasion is a thought "not for sober ear", one that must be held until meditation masters "all its parts". The mummy image, used near the start and at the close, pictures a mind wrapped tight in its own concentration, safe from the "cannon" of the world outside. The poem never states the thought outright.

Context

The poem was first printed in Seven Poems and a Fragment (Cuala, 1922) and later closed The Tower (1928). It is dated Oxford, 1920, when Yeats and his wife George were living at 4 Broad Street, and the "great Christ Church Bell" belongs to the Oxford college nearby. Yeats also used it as the epilogue to A Vision (1925), the book of his philosophy that grew out of George's automatic writing.

The three ghosts are friends from the occult world of his youth. MacGregor is Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, a founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which Yeats joined in 1890; they fell out in the order's schism of 1900, and Mathers died in 1918. Florence Emery is the actress Florence Farr, a Golden Dawn adept and Yeats's close collaborator, who died in 1917 after leaving England to teach in Ceylon. H. is usually identified as the artist and mystic William Thomas Horton.

Form

Ten stanzas of ten lines, each rhymed ABCABCDEED. Lines 1, 2, 4, 5 and 10 of each stanza have five beats and the rest three, so every stanza quickens through its short middle lines before a long last line brings it to rest. Refrains from the second stanza return in the last two, tying the close to the opening.