King and no King
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Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.
In brief
SummaryA lover mourns the everyday closeness lost to a hasty pledge.
The poem opens with the cry of the "No King", a figure from an old play who later became king, who wished that what stood in his way were "anything but merely voice", since nothing outweighs a spoken word. Kindly "Old Romance" let him win in the end. The poet and the woman he addresses have had no such luck. They hoped for a story as "clean and sweet", but were defeated by a pledge she made "In momentary anger long ago". Not sharing her religious faith, he cannot be sure they will find anything better beyond the grave. The poem ends on what they have lost: the small, daily comforts of a shared life.
Lines to remember
The hourly kindness, the day's common speech,
The habitual content of each with each
When neither soul nor body has been crossed.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 4The No King's cry
"Would it were anything but merely voice!" cries the No King, who is later made king. He wishes his obstacle were anything but a word, for he knows of nothing that, weighed against a word, is more than noise. A spoken vow binds harder than any fact.
Lines 5 to 8Romance is kind
"Old Romance", the kindly logic of old stories, let the No King win "Somewhere or somehow" that the poet has forgotten, though he had only cannon on his side. The poet and his beloved had hoped to find "as clean and sweet a tale".
Lines 9 to 13Defeated by a pledge
Instead they "have been defeated by that pledge you gave", a vow made "In momentary anger long ago". She has a faith he does not share, and he asks how he can know that "beyond the grave" they will find anything as good as what they have lost.
Lines 14 to 16What is lost
The last lines name the loss with great simplicity: "The hourly kindness, the day's common speech", the contentment of two people together "When neither soul nor body has been crossed". It is not grand passion he mourns, but ordinary companionship.
Themes
Words and vows
The poem is about the power of a spoken word. The No King wishes his obstacle were "anything but merely voice", because nothing weighs more than a word, and the poet's own hopes are "defeated by that pledge you gave". A few words said "In momentary anger" have shaped two lives, and nothing in the poem can undo them.
Ordinary happiness
The ending turns from heroic romance to daily life. What he longs for is "The hourly kindness, the day's common speech" and "The habitual content of each with each". These plain phrases are the most moving in the poem: the good thing lost is companionship, not ecstasy.
Faith and doubt
She trusts in a life after death; he does not share "your faith". Faced with "the blinding light beyond the grave", he cannot be sure that heaven will give back what earth has denied. His doubt makes the present loss final.
Context
The poem was published in The Green Helmet and Other Poems (Cuala Press, 1910). Its title comes from A King and No King, a play by the Jacobean dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. The woman addressed is usually taken to be Maud Gonne, a convert to Catholicism whose faith Yeats did not share, and the poem belongs with the other poems to her in this book, such as "Reconciliation" and "Words".
Form
Sixteen lines of iambic pentameter in four groups of enclosed rhyme, abba ("voice", "King", "anything", "noise"), though the poem is printed as a single block. Its sentences run on across the rhyme groups, so the argument feels like thought in motion, until the last three lines settle into a quiet list.
