Imitated from the Japanese
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1938. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2034, 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 2034.
It begins: A most astonishing thing
In brief
SummaryA seventy-year-old marvels that he has never danced for joy.
A tiny poem of astonishment. The speaker has lived seventy years, no ragged beggar but a man of some standing, and spring has come round again, with its flowers to cheer. Yet the astonishing thing he has to report is that in all those years, man and boy, he has never danced for joy.
Lines to remember
And never have I danced for joy.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 4Seventy springs
He announces something astonishing: he has lived seventy years. A bracketed cheer for the spring flowers interrupts, as spring comes round once more.
Lines 5 to 9Never danced for joy
He repeats the seventy years, adding that he was no ragged beggar, then saves the real astonishment for the last line: in all that time he has never danced for joy. The joyous spring throws the confession into relief.
Themes
Age and joy
The poem measures a long life and finds it lacking in one thing, pure joy. Comfort and position ("No ragged beggar-man") have not brought it. Coming from an old poet, the last line is both comic and sad.
Spring and renewal
The bracketed cheer for spring sets the world's yearly rebirth against a single human life. Spring returns again and again; the speaker's chance of dancing for joy may already be gone.
Context
The poem was first published in New Poems (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1938). Yeats turned seventy in June 1935, so the seventy years are his own. As the title says, it imitates a Japanese poem, keeping the brevity of that tradition.
Form
Nine short lines: a two-line opening, a bracketed couplet cheering the spring, and five closing lines. The words about seventy years return four times, like an old man repeating himself, and the few rhymes (thing and Spring, boy and joy) give the final line its snap.
