Another Song of a Fool

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1919from The Wild Swans at Coole12 lines

This great purple butterfly,In the prison of my hands,Has a learning in his eyeNot a poor fool understands.

Once he lived a schoolmasterWith a stark, denying look,A string of scholars went in fearOf his great birch and his great book.

Like the clangour of a bell,Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet,That is how he learnt so wellTo take the roses for his meat.

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

In brief

Summary

A fool holds a butterfly that was once a stern schoolmaster.

The fool holds a great purple butterfly captive in his hands and sees in its eye a learning he cannot understand. Then he tells its story: in an earlier life the butterfly was a schoolmaster with "a stark, denying look", whose pupils feared his birch and his book. Learning came to him through sweetness and harshness together, "Like the clangour of a bell", and so he learnt at last "To take the roses for his meat". The stern teacher who denied all pleasure has come back as a creature that lives on flowers. It is a small, strange fable about reincarnation and the lessons a soul must learn.

Lines to remember

This great purple butterfly,

Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet,

To take the roses for his meat.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4The captive butterfly
The butterfly is held "In the prison of my hands", yet it has "a learning in his eye" that no "poor fool" can follow. The fool is the captor, but the butterfly is the wiser of the two.
Lines 5 to 8The old schoolmaster
Once, the fool says, the butterfly "lived a schoolmaster". He had "a stark, denying look", and a "string of scholars" feared "his great birch and his great book". The doubled "great" makes both punishment and learning loom over the children.
Lines 9 to 12Roses for meat
His lesson came "Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet", like a ringing bell. The mirrored phrase sounds like the bell swinging back and forth. The result is a reversal: the man who denied pleasure now takes "the roses for his meat", feeding on flowers.

Themes

Rebirth

The poem assumes that a soul can return in a new form. The harsh schoolmaster has become a butterfly, the most delicate of creatures. The change suggests a soul completing what it lacked: a life of denial is followed by a life of sweetness, taking "the roses for his meat".

Learning

There are two kinds of learning here. The schoolmaster's is the "great book" enforced with the "great birch", and his pupils learn in fear. The butterfly's is a wordless "learning in his eye". The fool senses the second kind even though he "understands" neither.

Wisdom of the fool

The fool calls himself "a poor fool", yet he is the one who sees the butterfly's past life and the lesson it has learnt. As in the other fool songs, simplicity gives him a kind of insight that the learned schoolmaster lacked.

Context

The poem was collected in the enlarged edition of The Wild Swans at Coole, published by Macmillan in 1919. It follows "Two Songs of a Fool" and shares their speaker, one of the moon-phase figures of "The Phases of the Moon", printed nearby. The idea of souls passing through many lives was central to the system Yeats was building in these years, later set out in A Vision (1925).

Form

Three quatrains of short four-beat lines, rhymed abab ("butterfly", "hands", "eye", "understands"). The rhythm is simple and song-like, suiting a fool's song. The chiasmus "Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet" is the one moment where the verse turns back on itself, like the swing of a bell.