For Anne Gregory
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: 'Never shall a young man
In brief
SummaryA young woman and an older poet argue about beauty and true love.
A playful dialogue between the poet and a young woman with glorious yellow hair. He tells her that no young man, thrown into despair by those great honey-coloured ramparts of hair, will ever love her for herself alone. She replies that she can dye her hair brown, black or carrot, so that young men will love her for herself. He caps the argument: last night he heard an old religious man declare that he had found a text proving that only God could love her for herself alone and not her yellow hair. The joke carries a real question: can human love ever see past beauty?
Lines to remember
And not your yellow hair.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 6The poet's warning
The poet speaks first. Young men, driven to despair by her hair, which he pictures as great honey-coloured ramparts round her ears, will never love her for herself alone. The mock-military image makes her beauty a fortification that both draws lovers in and keeps them out.
Lines 7 to 12Her answer
She answers briskly that she can buy hair-dye and change the colour to brown, black or carrot. Then young men may love her for herself alone. The comic "carrot" shows her wit and her impatience at being judged by her looks.
Lines 13 to 18Only God
He caps the argument with an anecdote. An old religious man declared last night that he had found a text proving only God could love her for herself alone and not her hair. The refrain, repeated for the third time, now carries real weight: human love is always drawn by appearance.
Themes
Beauty and love
The poem asks whether anyone can be loved for their true self rather than their looks. The young woman thinks she can remove the obstacle with a bottle of dye. The poet's answer is that beauty is not a disguise to be removed: only God sees the soul beneath. Human love, however sincere, begins with the eye.
Youth and age
The dialogue sets a young woman's confident idealism against an older man's gentle scepticism. She believes she can control how she is loved; he has seen enough to doubt it. The tone is affectionate, not preachy: the older speaker teases, and the religious man's "text" is half a joke.
Human and divine love
Only in the last stanza does God enter, and the whole argument shifts. The refrain about being loved "for yourself alone" moves from the young men of stanza 1, to the girl's hopes in stanza 2, to God in stanza 3. Pure love for the self is placed beyond human reach.
Context
Anne Gregory was Lady Gregory's granddaughter, the daughter of Robert Gregory, whose death as an airman in 1918 Yeats mourned in several poems. She grew up at Coole Park, where Yeats was a frequent guest for most of her childhood, and was a young woman with striking fair hair when he wrote the poem. It was collected in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1933).
It is one of Yeats's lightest poems, but it touches a lifelong subject: the power of a woman's beauty, and whether it helps or hinders love. The older speaker, teasing and fond, recalls "To a Young Beauty" and "A Prayer for my Daughter", where Yeats also thinks about the burdens that beauty brings.
Form
Three six-line stanzas of short lines, mostly of three beats, in which the even lines rhyme on one sound throughout the poem ("despair", "ear", "hair"). A two-line refrain about loving her for herself ends every stanza, changing speaker and meaning each time. The light ballad rhythm suits a teasing conversation.
