At Galway Races

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1910from The Green Helmet and Other Poems16 lines

There where the course is,Delight makes all of the one mind,The riders upon the galloping horses,The crowd that closes in behind:We, too, had good attendance once,Hearers and hearteners of the work;Aye, horsemen for companions,Before the merchant and the clerkBreathed on the world with timid breath.Sing on: sometime, and at some new moon,We’ll learn that sleeping is not death,Hearing the whole earth change its tune,Its flesh being wild, and it againCrying aloud as the race course is,And we find hearteners among menThat ride upon horses.

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

In brief

Summary

Watching the races, Yeats longs for an age of horsemen and poets.

At the racecourse the whole crowd is of "one mind", caught up in delight at the galloping horses. Poets, Yeats says, once had an audience like that: horsemen who listened to and encouraged their work, before "the merchant and the clerk" chilled the world with their timid ways. He ends in hope. Some day the earth will "change its tune", grow wild again and cry out like the crowd at the races, and poets will find their "hearteners" among horsemen once more.

Lines to remember

Delight makes all of the one mind,

Before the merchant and the clerk

We'll learn that sleeping is not death,

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4The racecourse
At the course, "Delight makes all of the one mind": riders and crowd are joined by a single passion. The loose, galloping rhythm and the rhyme of "course is" with "horses" suit the scene.
Lines 5 to 9The lost audience
"We, too", the poets, once had "good attendance": "Hearers and hearteners of the work", and horsemen at that. That was before "the merchant and the clerk" breathed their "timid breath" on the world, clouding it with caution.
Lines 10 to 16A new moon
"Sing on" urges poets to keep going. At "some new moon" the world will wake, for "sleeping is not death". The earth's flesh will be "wild" again, crying aloud like the racecourse, and poets will find encouragers among riders. The last lines echo the first, returning us to the course.

Themes

Poet and audience

The poem is about what poetry needs: an audience of "one mind", passionate and wholehearted, like the racing crowd. Yeats's ideal listeners are "Hearers and hearteners", people who both listen and encourage. That audience is missing now, and the poem is partly a lament for the loss, partly an instruction to "Sing on" regardless.

Class

Yeats sets the horseman against "the merchant and the clerk". The horseman stands for courage, risk and aristocratic ease; the merchant and clerk for caution and calculation, breathing "timid breath". It is an early statement of a preference Yeats kept all his life, for the aristocrat and the countryman over the middle class.

Renewal

The poem ends in prophecy. "Sleeping is not death": the old spirit is only dormant. At "some new moon" the whole earth will "change its tune" and its "flesh" will be "wild" again. A day at the races becomes a promise that passion will return to the life of the country.

Context

The poem was first collected in The Green Helmet and Other Poems (Cuala Press, 1910). The Galway Races are held each summer at Ballybrit, just outside Galway city. The first printed text began "Out yonder, where the race course is"; the plainer opening printed here came in later collected editions. The poem's contempt for "the merchant and the clerk" looks forward to the anger of "September 1913".

Form

Sixteen lines, mostly of four beats, rhymed in alternating pairs throughout. Several rhymes are loose ("once" and "companions"). The poem opens and closes with short lines and with the same odd rhyme of "course is" and "horses", so it ends where it began, back at the racecourse.

Revised: 1910/1912 text begins 'Out yonder, where the race course is' (Gutenberg 30488); later text 'There where the course is' (Standard Ebooks, Collected Poems 1933).