Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors
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: What they undertook to do
In brief
SummaryA four-line thanks to unseen teachers for revealing how things hang.
A tiny poem of thanks. The unknown instructors did what they set out to do. What they showed is that everything hangs like a drop of dew on a blade of grass: the whole world is poised, delicate and complete, on the point of falling or shining.
Lines to remember
All things hang like a drop of dew
Line by line
Lines 1 to 4The drop of dew
The first two lines praise the instructors for completing their task. The last two give their lesson in one image: all things hang like dew on a blade of grass, a picture of fragility, balance and perfect completeness at once.
Themes
Revelation
The instructors are unknown, and the poem does not say who they are. What matters is that they "brought to pass" what they promised. The poem records gratitude for a revelation received rather than reasoned out.
Fragility
The drop of dew is a small, exact image for the whole world. It suggests that everything is held in a delicate balance, briefly perfect and easily lost. The shift in scale, from everything that exists to one blade of grass, gives the poem its force.
Context
The poem appears in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1933). The "instructors" are generally understood as the spirit communicators who spoke through the automatic writing of Yeats's wife, George, from 1917, material Yeats shaped into his system in A Vision.
Form
Four lines rhyming ABAB, with long first and third lines and short second and fourth. The short lines land like conclusions. Nothing is wasted, and the brevity itself mirrors the smallness of the dewdrop.
