Her Triumph

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1929from The Winding Stair and Other Poems12 lines

I did the dragon’s will until you cameBecause I had fancied love a casualImprovisation, or a settled gameThat followed if I let the kerchief fall:Those deeds were best that gave the minute wingsAnd heavenly music if they gave it wit;And then you stood among the dragon-rings.I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered itAnd broke the chain and set my ankles free,Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;And now we stare astonished at the sea,And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.

Text: The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, London, 1933). Public domain.

In brief

Summary

A woman is set free from careless love by a heroic lover.

The woman looks back on her life before she met her lover. She "did the dragon's will", treating love as a casual improvisation or a ritual game that began when she let a kerchief fall. The only good moments were those that "gave the minute wings". Then he appeared among the dragon's coils. She mocked him, but he mastered the dragon, broke her chain and set her free, like Saint George or Perseus. The poem ends in wonder, the two lovers staring at the sea while "a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us".

Lines to remember

And broke the chain and set my ankles free,

And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 6The dragon's will
Before he came she lived by "the dragon's will". Love seemed a casual improvisation or "a settled game" begun by dropping a kerchief. She valued only the moments that "gave the minute wings", with music and wit.
Lines 7 to 10The rescue
Then "you stood among the dragon-rings". She mocked him, "being crazy", but he "mastered it", broke the chain and freed her ankles: "Saint George or else a pagan Perseus". The Christian and the Greek dragon-slayer stand side by side.
Lines 11 to 12Wonder
The rescue leaves them not triumphant but "astonished". They stare at the sea, and a "miraculous strange bird" shrieks at them: the new love is wild and unfamiliar, far beyond the old games.

Themes

Love transformed

The poem contrasts two kinds of love. The first is a light social game of dropped kerchiefs and witty moments. The second arrives as a rescue that breaks a chain. True love here is not easy pleasure but liberation, and it leaves the lovers "astonished" rather than content.

Myth

The woman tells her story through the old tales of the dragon-slayer. Saint George and Perseus both kill a monster to free a captive woman; Perseus freed Andromeda, chained to a rock by the sea, which explains the sea in the last lines. The myths lift a private love into something heroic and strange.

Context

This is the fourth poem of "A Woman Young and Old", first published in The Winding Stair (New York, 1929) and collected in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933). After the flirting of "A First Confession", the woman meets a love that changes her, and the sequence moves from youthful games to serious passion.

Form

Twelve five-beat lines rhymed in alternating pairs (ABAB CDCD EFEF). Sentences run on across the line endings, most sharply where "casual" spills into "Improvisation", which gives the voice a breathless, spoken urgency.