Her Courtesy

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1917from The Wild Swans at Coole8 lines

With the old kindness, the old distinguished graceShe lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hairPropped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face.She would not have us sad because she is lying there,And when she meets our gaze her eyes are laughter-lit,Her speech a wicked tale that we may vie with herMatching our broken-hearted wit against her wit,Thinking of saints and of Petronius Arbiter.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

A dying woman keeps her visitors amused with grace and wicked wit.

The first poem of "Upon a Dying Lady" shows her in bed, propped on pillows, her "lovely piteous head" framed by dull red hair, rouge on her pale face. She has kept her "old kindness" and "old distinguished grace". She will not let her friends be sad; her eyes are "laughter-lit" and she tells wicked stories, so that her visitors must try to match her wit with their own broken hearts. The poem ends by setting saints beside Petronius, the Roman who met death with elegant composure.

Lines to remember

With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace

Thinking of saints and of Petronius Arbiter.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4Propped on pillows
The picture is exact and unsentimental: "dull red hair", "rouge on the pallor of her face". The rouge is itself a courtesy, a brave show for visitors. Line 4 states her purpose: "She would not have us sad".
Lines 5 to 8Wit against wit
She meets their gaze with "laughter-lit" eyes and a "wicked tale", challenging them to "vie with her". Their wit is "broken-hearted", hers is not. The last line pairs "saints" with "Petronius Arbiter", holiness and worldly style as two ways of facing death.

Themes

Grace in dying

Her "courtesy" is the courage to keep behaving well: to wear rouge, to laugh, to tell a "wicked tale" so that her friends will not grieve. The word "old" twice in line 1 insists she is unchanged by illness, still the woman they knew.

Wit and sorrow

The friends' wit is "broken-hearted", and the poem lets both feelings stand together. Her gaiety does not cancel their sorrow; it gives them a way of bearing it, a game of matching stories that keeps them close to her. Laughter becomes the shared language of the sickroom.

Context

This is the first of seven short poems in the sequence "Upon a Dying Lady", collected in The Wild Swans at Coole (Cuala Press, 1917). The lady is usually identified as Mabel Beardsley, sister of the artist Aubrey Beardsley, whom Yeats visited during her long final illness with cancer. The sequence follows her through that illness with affection and admiration rather than pity.

Form

Eight long lines rhymed abab cdcd ("grace" and "face", "hair" and "there", "lit" and "wit", "her" and "Arbiter"). The long, unhurried lines have a stately movement fitting the "distinguished grace" they describe, and the comic rhyme of "her" with "Arbiter" shares in her wit.