Her Vision in the Wood

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1929from The Winding Stair and Other Poems32 lines

Dry timber under that rich foliage,At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood,Too old for a man’s love I stood in rageImagining men. Imagining that I couldA greater with a lesser pang assuageOr but to find if withered vein ran blood,I tore my body that its wine might coverWhatever could recall the lip of lover.

And after that I held my fingers up,Stared at the wine-dark nail, or dark that ranDown every withered finger from the top;But the dark changed to red, and torches shone,And deafening music shook the leaves; a troopShouldered a litter with a wounded man,Or smote upon the string and to the soundSang of the beast that gave the fatal wound.

All stately women moving to a songWith loosened hair or foreheads grief-distraught,It seemed a Quattrocento painter’s throng,A thoughtless image of Mantegna’s thought—Why should they think that are for ever young?Till suddenly in grief’s contagion caught,I stared upon his blood-bedabbled breastAnd sang my malediction with the rest.

That thing all blood and mire, that beast-torn wreck,Half turned and fixed a glazing eye on mine,And, though love’s bitter-sweet had all come back,Those bodies from a picture or a coinNor saw my body fall nor heard it shriek,Nor knew, drunken with singing as with wine,That they had brought no fabulous symbol thereBut my heart’s victim and its torturer.

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

In brief

Summary

An ageing woman's vision of a wounded god becomes her own lost lover.

At midnight in a sacred wood, a woman too old for love tears at her own flesh in rage, hoping one pain can drown another, or simply to see whether her withered veins still hold blood. As she stares at her darkened fingers the scene changes: torches, loud music, and a procession carrying a wounded man on a litter, singing of the beast that killed him. The mourners look like figures from a Renaissance painting, and she is caught up in their grief. Then the dying man turns his glazing eye on her, and she falls and shrieks. The singers never notice, for they have brought no myth but her own lover, "my heart's victim and its torturer".

Lines to remember

A thoughtless image of Mantegna's thought

But my heart's victim and its torturer.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 8Rage in the wood
She stands at "wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood", "Too old for a man's love", raging as she imagines men. She tears her body, hoping a lesser pain will ease a greater, or just to learn whether her "withered vein" still runs with blood.
Lines 9 to 16The procession
She holds up her fingers, dark with blood. Then the dark turns red, torches shine, "deafening music" shakes the leaves, and a troop carries "a wounded man" on a litter, singing "of the beast that gave the fatal wound".
Lines 17 to 24Caught in grief
The mourners are "stately women" with loosened hair, like a crowd from a Quattrocento painting, "A thoughtless image of Mantegna's thought". Figures in art are forever young and never think. Then grief catches her too, and she sings her curse with the rest.
Lines 25 to 32Victim and torturer
The "beast-torn wreck" turns "a glazing eye" on her, and love's bitter-sweetness floods back. The painted mourners never see her fall or hear her shriek. They think they carry a "fabulous symbol", but the dying man is her own lover, both victim and torturer.

Themes

Age and desire

The woman is "Too old for a man's love" yet still consumed by it. Her self-wounding tests whether a "withered vein ran blood", and the answer is yes. Desire has outlived the body's youth, and that mismatch is the source of her rage.

Myth and private grief

The procession looks like a ritual from an old myth or a painting, but to her it is personal. What the mourners treat as a "fabulous symbol" is her own lover. The poem turns the grand, public mourning of myth into one woman's private anguish, unseen by the singers around her.

Love as torment

The final line names the lover as "my heart's victim and its torturer". Love wounds in both directions: she has hurt him and he has hurt her. The beast of the myth becomes an image of passion itself, which tears apart the thing it loves.

Context

This is the eighth 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). The woman of the sequence is now old, and this is its most violent and visionary poem.

The procession recalls the myth of Adonis, the beautiful youth killed by a wild boar and mourned each year by women in ancient rites. Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter of the fifteenth century, and "Quattrocento" is the Italian name for that century of Renaissance art.

Form

Four stanzas of ottava rima, eight five-beat lines rhymed ABABABCC, the stanza Yeats also used in "Sailing to Byzantium" and "Among School Children". Many rhymes are only near-rhymes ("up" and "top", "wreck" and "back"), roughening the grand stanza to suit the violence of the scene.