Her Anxiety
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: Earth in beauty dressed
In brief
SummaryA woman fears that all true love must fade, and dares denial.
The earth, dressed in beauty, waits for spring to return. The woman speaking has no such hope for love: all true love must die, she says, or at best turn into something lesser. Lovers' bodies and breath are so demanding that every touch or sigh brings love nearer death. Each stanza ends with the same challenge to her lover: prove that I lie.
Lines to remember
All true love must die,
Line by line
Lines 1 to 6Spring returns, love does not
The earth can wait for spring to come back, but love has no second season. All true love dies or sinks into something lesser. She ends by daring her lover to prove her wrong.
Lines 7 to 12Every touch
Lovers' bodies and breath are exacting: they must touch or sigh. Yet each touch moves love closer to its death, as if love spends itself by being expressed. The challenge is repeated.
Themes
Love's mortality
The poem sets love against nature. The earth renews itself each spring, while love only fades. Worse, the very acts of love, touching and sighing, wear it away. The refrain "Prove that I lie" shows how much she hopes to be wrong.
Body and love
The body is love's instrument and its destroyer. Lovers have "exacting breath", a body that demands, and every touch spends something. The anxiety of the title is the fear that physical love cannot last.
Context
The poem belongs to the sequence Words for Music Perhaps, first collected by the Cuala Press in 1932 and then in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1933). It is answered by the next poem, "His Confidence", where the man insists that love springs again even from a broken heart.
Form
Two six-line stanzas in short lines of two or three beats, rhyming ABCABC with some half rhymes (have and give). Line 3 of each stanza rhymes with the refrain, so the dare is prepared by what comes before it. The brevity gives the fear a quick, urgent sound.