An Appointment

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1914from Responsibilities12 lines

Being out of heart with governmentI took a broken root to flingWhere the proud, wayward squirrel went,Taking delight that he could spring;And he, with that low whinnying soundThat is like laughter, sprang againAnd so to the other tree at a bound.Nor the tame will, nor timid brain,Nor heavy knitting of the browBred that fierce tooth and cleanly limbAnd threw him up to laugh on the bough;No government appointed him.

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

In brief

Summary

A wild squirrel mocks a poet weary of government and officialdom.

Fed up with government, the speaker throws a broken root at a squirrel and enjoys watching it spring away. The squirrel leaps again with a low, laughing sound and bounds to the next tree. No tame will, timid brain or anxious frown produced that fierce tooth and clean limb, the speaker reflects, and nothing official set it laughing on the bough. The last line makes the joke plain: "No government appointed him."

Lines to remember

Being out of heart with government

No government appointed him.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 7The squirrel leaps
"Out of heart with government", he flings a root at "the proud, wayward squirrel". The animal springs away with "that low whinnying sound / That is like laughter", as if mocking him. The speaker's pleasure lies in its free, unpredictable movement.
Lines 8 to 12Not appointed
The three "Nor" phrases list the qualities of cautious officials: "tame will", "timid brain", "heavy knitting of the brow". None of these made the squirrel's "fierce tooth and cleanly limb". The punchline turns the title's meaning of a public post against the powers that hand them out.

Themes

Nature against officialdom

The squirrel is everything government is not: "proud", "wayward", quick and laughing. The frowning, timid mind of officialdom could never produce such life. The contrast is set up in the first line and closed in the last. The speaker, "out of heart", seems to recover his spirits simply by watching something that no committee could ever have made.

Wildness and freedom

The squirrel's energy is its own. It "sprang again" and was thrown "up to laugh on the bough" by nature, not by any authority. The speaker takes delight in a creature that owes nothing to anyone and cannot be managed.

Context

The poem was collected in Responsibilities (Cuala Press, 1914), a book in which Yeats attacks the meanness of public life in poems such as "September 1913". Here the attack is lighter, made through a small comedy of a man, a stick and a squirrel.

Form

Twelve four-beat lines rhymed alternately, ABAB ("government" and "went", "fling" and "spring"). The title is a pun: an "appointment" is a government post, and the final rhyme, "limb" and "him", snaps the joke shut.