Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgment
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1932. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2028, 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 2028.
It begins: 'Love is all
In brief
SummaryCrazy Jane and her lover talk of love that time cannot complete.
A short dialogue. Jane says that love is unsatisfied unless it takes the whole of body and soul. She warns her lover that if he takes her he must take the sour with the sweet, her scoffing and scolding too, and he agrees. She remembers lying naked on the grass, hidden away, on a black day. Finally she asks what true love is and what can be shown of it: everything could be known, she says, if only Time were gone. Each time he answers with the same dry agreement.
Lines to remember
If Time were but gone.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 5Body and soul
Jane declares that love stays unsatisfied unless it takes the whole person, body and soul together. A narrator's tag, "that is what Jane said", sets her words down like evidence.
Lines 6 to 10Take the sour
She tells him that taking her means taking the sour too: she can scowl and scold for an hour. He agrees that is certainly the case, a reply that is patient, amused or weary.
Lines 11 to 15Naked on the grass
She remembers lying naked with the grass for a bed, hidden away on a "black day". The memory is of physical love, but darkened, perhaps by shame or by what came after.
Lines 16 to 20If Time were gone
She asks what can be shown and what true love is. All could be known, she says, if Time were gone, which is what the Day of Judgment promises. He gives the same reply as before.
Themes
Wholeness in love
Jane's opening claim is that love must take "the whole", body and soul. Love that takes only part is unsatisfied. In the Crazy Jane poems the body is never an enemy of the soul; true love needs both.
Time and judgment
The title places the talk at the Day of Judgment, when time ends and all is revealed. Jane's last words suggest that only then could true love be fully known or shown. In time, love is always partial and misunderstood.
Two voices
Jane speaks with passion; the man answers each time with the same flat phrase. The contrast is comic, but it also shows that his agreement may not reach what she means.
Context
The poem belongs to the sequence Words for Music Perhaps, first collected by the Cuala Press in 1932 and then in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1933). It is one of seven Crazy Jane poems, in which an old countrywoman speaks for bodily love against the Church's teaching.
Form
Four five-line stanzas in very short lines, with a pattern of rhymes inside each stanza. The last line of each stanza alternates between two refrains: Jane's words reported, then the man's dry reply. The short lines and repeated tags make it read like a folk dialogue song.