Certain Artists bring her Dolls and Drawings

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1917from The Wild Swans at Coole11 lines

Bring where our Beauty liesA new modelled doll, or drawing,With a friend’s or an enemy’sFeatures, or maybe showingHer features when a tressOf dull red hair was flowingOver some silken dressCut in the Turkish fashion,Or it may be like a boy’s.We have given the world our passion,We have naught for death but toys.

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

In brief

Summary

Artist friends can offer a dying woman only toys and pictures.

The speaker, one of a group of artist friends, calls on them to bring gifts to "our Beauty" as she lies ill: a newly modelled doll, a drawing of a friend or enemy, or a picture of the lady herself in younger days, her red hair loose over a silk dress cut in the Turkish fashion, or dressed like a boy. The last two lines give the reason the gifts are so slight: artists have given their passion to the world, and have nothing left to offer death but toys.

Lines to remember

We have given the world our passion,

We have naught for death but toys.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 9Bring your gifts
One long sentence lists the possible gifts: dolls with the "Features" of friends or enemies, or her own likeness, "a tress / Of dull red hair" flowing over "some silken dress / Cut in the Turkish fashion". The playful dressing up recalls her lively, theatrical past.
Lines 10 to 11Toys for death
The mood turns in a couplet: "We have given the world our passion, / We have naught for death but toys." The artists' whole strength has gone into their work for the living; before death they are almost helpless.

Themes

Art and death

The final lines admit the limits of art. Artists have poured their "passion" into the world, but death is not moved by drawings and dolls. The gifts are still offered, though, and the poem is itself one of them: a small, loving thing brought to the bedside.

Friendship

"Our Beauty" is a shared, affectionate name, and the gifts are chosen to amuse her, with likenesses of "a friend's or an enemy's / Features". The friends meet her illness with play, matching her own refusal to be solemn. Their gifts are jokes as well as tributes.

Context

This is the second poem of "Upon a Dying Lady", collected in The Wild Swans at Coole (Cuala Press, 1917). The lady is usually identified as Mabel Beardsley, whose artist friends brought her dolls and drawings during her last illness. The dolls return in the next poem, "She turns the Dolls' Faces to the Wall".

Form

Eleven short three-beat lines with close, interlaced rhymes: "drawing", "showing" and "flowing"; "tress" and "dress"; "fashion" and "passion"; "boy's" and "toys". The run-on sentence tumbles through its list like a parcel of gifts, then stops on the blunt word "toys".