Her Race

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1917from The Wild Swans at Coole12 lines

She has not grown uncivilAs narrow natures wouldAnd called the pleasures evilHappier days thought good;She knows herself a womanNo red and white of a face,Or rank, raised from a commonUnreckonable race;And how should her heart fail herOr sickness break her willWith her dead brother’s valourFor an example still.

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

In brief

Summary

Illness cannot break a woman strengthened by her brother's courage.

Unlike narrow people who turn sour when they suffer, she has not grown bitter or begun calling evil the pleasures she enjoyed in happier days. She knows herself to be a woman not made by a pretty face or social rank, but raised from a "common / Unreckonable race". How could her heart fail, the poem asks, with her dead brother's courage still before her as an example.

Lines to remember

With her dead brother's valour

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4Not grown bitter
The poem defines her first by what she has not done. "Narrow natures" turn against the pleasures they can no longer enjoy; she refuses to call "evil" what "Happier days thought good".
Lines 5 to 8Her true nature
She is not defined by "red and white of a face", a pretty complexion, or by "rank". Her strength comes from a "common / Unreckonable race", a stock too numerous or too mysterious to be counted.
Lines 9 to 12Her brother's valour
The poem ends with a question that is really a statement: her heart cannot fail, nor sickness "break her will", with "her dead brother's valour" still before her. The family's courage in dying is handed on.

Themes

Courage

Her courage is shown in refusals: she will not grow "uncivil", will not condemn old pleasures, will not let "sickness break her will". The model she follows is "her dead brother's valour", so courage becomes an inheritance. The closing question, "how should her heart fail her", treats her strength as certain.

Character and class

The poem rejects beauty and "rank" as the source of her strength. "Race" here means family stock, and "common" and "Unreckonable" suggest something deep and unmeasured rather than aristocratic. Her nobility is in how she behaves, not in her looks or her place in society.

Context

This is the fifth poem of "Upon a Dying Lady", collected in The Wild Swans at Coole (Cuala Press, 1917). The lady is usually identified as Mabel Beardsley; her brother, the artist Aubrey Beardsley, died young of tuberculosis in 1898, and the poem holds up his courage as her example.

Form

Twelve short three-beat lines in three quatrains rhymed abab, many with two-syllable rhymes ("uncivil" and "evil", "woman" and "common", "fail her" and "valour"). The trim stanzas give a sense of composure that matches her self-control.