Death

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1929from The Winding Stair and Other Poems12 lines

Nor dread nor hope attendA dying animal;A man awaits his endDreading and hoping all;Many times he died,Many times rose again.A great man in his prideConfronting murderous menCasts derision uponSupersession of breath;He knows death to the bone—Man has created death.

Text: The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, London, 1933). Public domain.

In brief

Summary

A great man facing his murderers scorns death, a human invention.

The poem opens with a contrast. An animal dies without dread or hope, but a man waits for his end feeling both. Man has died and risen many times, the poem says, pointing to Yeats's belief in repeated lives. Then comes a single figure: "A great man in his pride" facing "murderous men", who treats the ending of his breath with scorn. He knows death "to the bone", and the last line explains why he can mock it: "Man has created death." Twelve short lines carry a large idea, that death is partly a thing of the mind.

Lines to remember

Man has created death.

A great man in his pride

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4Animal and man
An animal meets death with neither dread nor hope. A man, by contrast, waits "Dreading and hoping all". The same two words return as verbs, so the difference between beast and man is heard as well as stated.
Lines 5 to 8Many deaths
The view widens: man "Many times" has died and "Many times rose again", an idea of repeated lives that Yeats took seriously. Then a particular figure appears, "A great man in his pride", facing "murderous men".
Lines 9 to 12Scorning death
The great man "Casts derision" on the "Supersession of breath", a dry, Latinate phrase for dying that shrinks death to a technicality. He knows death thoroughly, and the final line gives the reason for his scorn: death is something man has made.

Themes

Death and the mind

The final claim, "Man has created death", is the poem's centre. Animals simply die; only man anticipates, fears and hopes, and so turns an event into an idea. If death is partly made by the mind, the mind can also refuse to be ruled by it, which is what the great man does.

Courage and pride

The poem honours "A great man in his pride" who meets "murderous men" with derision. Pride, often a fault, is here the source of dignity. Read as a tribute to Kevin O'Higgins, it praises a public man who faced the threat of assassination without flinching.

Context

Yeats wrote "Death" after the assassination of Kevin O'Higgins on 10 July 1927. O'Higgins was Minister for Justice in the Free State government, a friend whom Yeats admired as the strong man of the new state, and he was shot dead in Dublin on his way to Mass.

The poem was first published in The Winding Stair (New York, 1929) and collected in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933). O'Higgins returns in Yeats's later poems, among the heroes of "Parnell's Funeral" and in the portraits of "The Municipal Gallery Revisited", where his face is remembered among those of Yeats's friends.

Form

Twelve lines of three beats, rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF, with the odd near-rhyme ("upon" and "bone"). The short lines and blunt statements give it the weight of an epitaph. Only one word, "Supersession", breaks the plain vocabulary, and it stands out for that reason.