Friends

The poet praises three women who shaped his life and joy.

The poet sets out to praise three women who have brought joy into his days. The first has shared a friendship of the mind for fifteen troubled years that nothing could disturb. The second had the strength to free him from "Youth's dreamy load", so that he now lives "Labouring in ecstasy". The third took everything until his youth was gone, with hardly a pitying look, and he cannot say how to praise her. Yet at daybreak, remembering her and her "eagle look", he feels such sweetness rise from his heart that he shakes from head to foot.

Line by line

1. Lines 1 to 3Three women

   The poem opens with a duty: "Now must I these three praise". The women are introduced together as the source of "What joy is in my days", which makes the harsher account of the third all the more striking later.

2. Lines 4 to 9A meeting of minds

   The first friendship has lasted "fifteen / Many times troubled years", and neither passing moods nor lasting cares have come between "Mind and delighted mind". The phrase pictures two minds taking pleasure in each other, an equal companionship.

3. Lines 10 to 16Freed to work

   The second woman's "hand" had strength to unbind "Youth's dreamy load", the burden of dreaming that no one can carry and still thrive. She changed him so that he lives "Labouring in ecstasy", a paradox joining hard work and joy.

4. Lines 17 to 20The one who took all

   The tone darkens. The third woman "took / All till my youth was gone" and gave barely "a pitying look" in return. His question, "How should I praise that one?", admits that ordinary thanks cannot fit her.

5. Lines 21 to 28Sweetness at dawn

   Awake at daybreak, he counts his good and bad for her sake and remembers "what eagle look still shows". Instead of bitterness, a great sweetness wells up "from my heart's root" until he shakes "from head to foot". The poem ends in helpless, physical feeling.

Themes

Context

The poem first appeared in a book in The Green Helmet and Other Poems (Macmillan, New York, 1912) and was later placed in Responsibilities. The three women are not named. The second, who freed him to work, is generally taken to be Lady Gregory, whose home at Coole Park gave him rest and a routine of steady writing.

The first friend, with her fifteen years of shared thought, is usually read as Olivia Shakespear, and the third, who took his youth, as Maud Gonne, whose refusals shaped much of his love poetry. By setting them side by side, the poem weighs steady friendship against a love that gave nothing back, and finds the second no less powerful.

Form

Twenty-eight short, three-beat lines in one unbroken block, rhymed alternately throughout ("praise" and "days", "wrought" and "thought"). The brisk lines carry long sentences that run across many line endings, so the poem reads like a single rush of thought ending in the physical shudder of the final line.