He thinks of those who have Spoken Evil of his Beloved

A lover tells a slandered woman that his song will outlast her enemies.

The speaker comforts a woman who has been spoken against "everywhere". He asks her to half close her eyes, loosen her hair and dream about "the great and their pride", then to set his song in the scales against them. A song is made of almost nothing, "a mouthful of air", yet he is sure it will last longer than the talk of the powerful: their own grandchildren will say they lied. The poem is short, calm and quietly defiant.

Line by line

1. Lines 1 to 3Rest and dream

   He begins with gentle commands, "Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair", as if helping her to rest after an ordeal. Only in line 3 do we learn the cause: "They have spoken against you everywhere". The slanderers are never named, only called "the great".

2. Lines 4 to 6Weighing the song

   He asks her to "weigh this song" against their pride, an image of scales. His claim is modest and huge at once: the song is only "a mouthful of air", but it will outlive the slander, until "Their children's children shall say they have lied".

Themes

Context

Published in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) as "Aedh thinks of those who have spoken Evil of his Beloved". Aedh was one of the named voices Yeats gave to the love poems in that book. From 1906 the name was replaced by a plain "He", as in several neighbouring poems.

Form

Six lines, mostly of four beats, on only two rhymes: "hair", "everywhere" and "air" against "pride", "pride" and "lied". Line 4 repeats the phrase "the great and their pride" from line 2, like a refrain. The tight, repeating sound makes the short poem feel like a charm or a vow.