John Kinsella's Lament for Mrs. Mary Moore
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: A bloody and a sudden end
In brief
SummaryA roguish old man mourns the bawd who kept his life merry.
A comic ballad of grief in the voice of John Kinsella. He opens by cursing Death, which takes what a man would keep and leaves what he would gladly lose. It could have had his sister or any of his cousins, but the fool wanted only Mary Moore, who knew better than anyone what pleases a man at table or in bed. He remembers her hard bargaining, the drink they shared and her stories unfit for the priest that kept the soul alive and banished age and care. He ends on Eden, where nobody would grow old or quarrel over halfpennies. Each stanza closes on his refrain: what will he do for pretty girls, now his old bawd is dead?
Lines to remember
What shall I do for pretty girls
Line by line
Lines 1 to 4Death the thief
The lament opens with a curse: may Death itself come to a bloody and sudden end, by gun or noose. Death deserves it, because it always takes what a man wants to keep and leaves him what he would gladly lose.
Lines 5 to 13Why Mary Moore
Death could have had his sister or his cousins by the score, but nothing would satisfy it except Mary Moore. No one else understood a man's pleasures at table or in bed, a phrase repeated as if he were savouring it. The refrain asks his comic, desolate question.
Lines 14 to 25Her bargains and stories
She drove a hard bargain, compared in an ugly old slur to a Jewish trader, but once the deal was struck they laughed, talked and drank. Her stories, not for the priest's ear, kept a man's soul alive and banished age and care. Being old, she could dress up anything she said.
Lines 26 to 37Eden lost
The priests' book says that without Adam's sin Eden would still be here, with Kinsella in it. There no hope would fail, no pleasant habit end, no man grow old or girl grow cold, and friends would walk together. Nobody picking bread from the trees would quarrel over halfpennies. The refrain closes the poem.
Themes
Grief and comedy
Kinsella's grief is real but his reasons are outrageous: he has lost his supplier of pretty girls. The refrain turns mourning into a joke, yet the joke has an edge of loss. The poem honours an unrespectable woman in the way a formal lament would honour a chieftain.
Age and pleasure
Mary Moore's stories could "Banish age and care", and the Eden of the last stanza is a place where no man grows old. Like the Wild Old Wicked Man and other late speakers of Yeats, Kinsella clings to the body's pleasures as a defence against age and death.
Church and the body
Her stories were not for the priest, and the priests' book blames Adam for the loss of paradise. Kinsella imagines Eden not as holy but as a place of endless feasting, love and friendship. The poem sides cheerfully with the body against clerical disapproval.
Context
The poem was first published in Last Poems and Two Plays (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1939). It is one of several late ballads in which Yeats speaks through rough, outspoken characters, much as he did earlier through Crazy Jane and Tom the Lunatic. The comparison of Mary Moore's bargaining to a Jewish trader in the second stanza draws on an antisemitic stereotype that was common at the time and that the poem uses without comment.
Form
Three stanzas in ballad measure, lines of four and three beats alternating and rhyming on the even lines. The first stanza has thirteen lines, because a line about table and bed is sung twice; the others have twelve. Each ends on the same two-line refrain, and the jaunty rhythm gives the lament the feel of a song sung in a public house.