Life

W. B. Yeatsfrom Early and uncollected poems20 lines

The child pursuing lizards in the grass,The sage, who deep in central nature delves,The preacher watching for the evil hour to pass,All these are souls that fly from their dread selves.

The squirrel yonder, hushed and wiseForswears his wandering ’mong the pine,And wherefore, then, should thy grey eyesWander away from mine?

The talking winds have found their home,Eve-soothed in some far leafy rest,And wherefore should thy bright brow roamMadonna from my breast?

A little while and⁠—red eve dies⁠—Our love shall be of yesterday,Ah, let us kiss each other’s eyes,And laugh our love away.

“I laughed upon the lips of Sophocles,I go as soft as folly; I am Fate.”This heard I where among the apple trees,Wild indolence and music have no date.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

Restless souls, a wandering beloved, and the laughing voice of Fate.

The poem opens with a gloomy claim: the child chasing lizards, the scholar and the preacher are all running from their own "dread selves". Then it turns to love. The squirrel has stopped wandering and the winds have gone to rest, so why should the beloved's grey eyes wander from the speaker? Their love will soon be "of yesterday", so let them kiss and "laugh our love away". A final stanza brings in a voice among apple trees: Fate, who laughed on the lips of Sophocles and moves "as soft as folly".

Lines to remember

All these are souls that fly from their dread selves.

I go as soft as folly; I am Fate.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4Running from the self
Three figures are lined up: a child after lizards, a sage digging into "central nature", a preacher waiting for "the evil hour to pass". Play, study and religion look different, but the stanza says they are the same: "souls that fly from their dread selves".
Lines 5 to 8Why wander
The squirrel, "hushed and wise", has given up roaming the pines. So why, the speaker asks, should "thy grey eyes / Wander away from mine?" The short lines and simple question bring the poem down from philosophy to a lover's complaint.
Lines 9 to 12The winds at rest
Even "The talking winds have found their home", soothed by evening in some leafy place. The same question comes again, now calling the beloved "Madonna": why should her "bright brow roam" from his breast. Nature settles; she does not.
Lines 13 to 16Laugh love away
Red evening is dying, and "Our love shall be of yesterday". Instead of mourning, he proposes they "kiss each other's eyes, / And laugh our love away". The dashes around "red eve dies" in line 13 mimic a catch in the breath.
Lines 17 to 20The voice of Fate
A voice speaks: "I laughed upon the lips of Sophocles, / I go as soft as folly; I am Fate." He heard it in an orchard where "Wild indolence and music have no date". Fate turns out to be light-footed and laughing, like the lovers themselves.

Themes

Restlessness

Everyone in the poem is moving away from something. The child, the sage and the preacher "fly from their dread selves"; the beloved's eyes "Wander away" and her brow will "roam". Only the squirrel and the winds find rest, and they do so by nature, not by choice.

Love and time

The love here is already ending. "A little while" and it "shall be of yesterday", like the dying red evening. The speaker's answer is not grief but a kind of gaiety: to kiss and "laugh our love away" while there is time.

Fate

The closing voice links the lovers' laughter to an ancient power. Fate laughed through Sophocles, the great writer of Greek tragedy, and goes "as soft as folly", unnoticed and careless. In the orchard, where "music have no date", time seems suspended even as Fate works.

Context

This is one of the early poems, printed in periodicals or in his first book of 1889, that Yeats left out of his later collections. The link to Sophocles is suggestive in hindsight: late in life Yeats made versions of Sophocles' Oedipus plays for the Abbey Theatre. Here the Greek tragedian stands simply for Fate's long history of laughing through great poets.

Form

Five quatrains, each rhyming ABAB. The outer stanzas use long lines of five or six beats for the large statements about souls and Fate, while the three middle stanzas shrink to short four-beat lines, ending on a three-beat question or plea. The change of line length marks the shift between philosophy and love talk.