Hound Voice
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1939. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2035, 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 2035.
It begins: Because we love bare hills and stunted trees
In brief
SummaryA wild, hunting kind of people waits for the hour of the hunt.
Yeats speaks for a kind of people, himself among them, who love bare hills and stunted trees and were the last to settle for the boredom of desk or spade. Long companioned by hounds, their voices carry, and a few half-sleeping souls still answer to the secret name "Hound Voice". The women he chose were such voices too, soft-spoken yet ready to give tongue; they knew the hour of terror that tests the soul and obeyed its call. The poem ends with a prophecy: some dawn they will find their ancient hounds at the door, follow a blood-dark track to a kill beside the shore, then bind their wounds amid chants of victory.
Lines to remember
Those images that waken in the blood.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 7The hidden name
Because they love wild, bare country and chose settled work last of all, and because they have lived so long with hounds, their voices carry. Even among those half asleep, a few half wake, renew their old choice and give tongue, proclaiming the secret name that marks them out.
Lines 8 to 14The women he picked
The women he chose spoke sweet and low, yet they too gave tongue: all were Hound Voices. They recognised each other from afar and knew the hour of terror that tests the soul. In its name they obeyed the call and understood the images that waken in the blood.
Lines 15 to 21The hunt is on
Some day, before dawn, they will find their ancient hounds at the door and know the hunt has begun. They will stumble along a blood-dark track to a kill beside the shore, then clean and bandage wounds, while victory chants rise among the circling hounds. The long last line spreads out like the pack.
Themes
Wildness and belonging
The Hound Voices are defined against settled, bored, respectable life. They love bare hills and stunted trees, not fertile ground. The "hidden name" makes them a secret brotherhood and sisterhood, recognising one another by the carrying quality of their voices, a people of the chase rather than the field.
Ancestral memory
The Hound Voices understand "images that waken in the blood", memories that seem to come from ancestors rather than from experience. The ancient hounds waiting at the door suggest an older Ireland of hunters and warriors returning. Yeats often held that such images pass down through families and races.
Violence and courage
The poem honours those who answer when the hour of terror comes, and it ends with a bloody hunt, a kill and wounds. The victory is exultant but grim. Written in the late 1930s, the closing vision relishes bloodshed in a way that many readers find troubling, part of the harsh temper of Yeats's last poems.
Context
The poem was first published in Last Poems and Two Plays (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1939). It is one of several late poems in which Yeats looks back on his friendships and loves as a company of chosen, spirited people, set apart from a middle-class world he disliked.
Readers have wondered who the women he picked were, and Maud Gonne and Lady Gregory are sometimes suggested, but the poem names no one. "Give tongue" is a hunting phrase: hounds give tongue when they bay on finding the scent.
Form
Three seven-line stanzas of mostly five-beat lines rhyming ABABBCC, rhyme royal, often with half rhymes (trees and because, low and knew). The final line of the poem stretches longer than the rest, so the ending seems to widen out into the circle of hounds.
