Church and State
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1935. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2031, and this site is served partly from American servers. So for now we give the notes without the full text; it will appear here in 2031.
It begins: Here is fresh matter, poet
In brief
SummaryA hope that Church and State will tame the mob, quickly abandoned.
Two short stanzas, the second answering the first. The poet is offered fresh matter for his old age: the power of Church and State, holding their mobs down. Under their order, he hopes, the heart's wine will run pure and the mind's bread grow sweet. Then he rejects that as a cowardly song and a dream. What if Church and State are themselves the mob howling at the door? Then the wine will run thick to the end, and the bread taste sour.
Lines to remember
Here is fresh matter, poet,
Bread taste sour.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 6Fresh matter
A voice offers the poet a new subject fit for old age: the might of Church and State, with their mobs under their feet. If they keep order, the wine of the heart will run pure and the bread of the mind grow sweet, images with a sacramental ring.
Lines 7 to 12A cowardly song
He answers himself: that was a cowardly song, a dream. Suppose Church and State are the very mob howling at the door. Then wine and bread, the nourishment of heart and mind, will be thick and sour to the end.
Themes
Authority and the mob
The poem tests a hope Yeats sometimes held, that strong institutions could protect culture from the crowd. The first stanza puts the mob "under their feet"; the second imagines the institutions themselves as the mob. It is a sharp, sceptical look at the Church and the new Irish State of the 1930s.
The poet's integrity
The first stanza sounds like a comfortable subject for an old poet, but he calls it cowardly. The heart's wine and the mind's bread stand for the inner life, which he fears will be spoiled rather than protected. The poem's turn is a refusal to take shelter in official power.
Context
The poem was collected in A Full Moon in March (Macmillan, 1935). In the Ireland of the 1930s the Catholic Church had great influence over the State, and Yeats had opposed measures such as the ban on divorce while a senator in the 1920s. The poem's quick reversal is typical of his late habit of arguing with himself inside a single short lyric.
Form
Two six-line stanzas of short, three-beat lines, rhyming on the second, fourth and sixth lines. The last two lines of each stanza mirror each other, wine then bread, so the hopeful ending of the first stanza is exactly reversed by the second.
