Love and Death

W. B. Yeatsfrom Early and uncollected poems32 lines

Behold the flashing waters,A cloven, dancing jet,That from the milk-white marbleFor ever foam and fret;Far off in drowsy valleysWhere the meadow-saffrons blow,The feet of summer dabbleIn their coiling calm and slow.The banks are worn for everBy a people sadly gay:A Titan, with loud laughter,Made them of fire and clay.Go ask the springing flowers,And the flowing air above,What are the twin-born waters,And they’ll answer Death and Love.

With wreaths of withered flowersTwo lonely spirits wait,With wreaths of withered flowers,’Fore paradise’s gate.They may not pass the portal,Poor earth-enkindled pair,Though sad is many a spiritTo pass and leave them thereStill staring at their flowers,That dull and faded are.If one should rise beside thee,The other is not far.Go ask the youngest angel,She will say with bated breath,By the door of Mary’s gardenAre the spirits Love and Death.

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

In brief

Summary

Love and Death pictured as twin waters and two waiting spirits.

The poem gives two pictures of the same pair. In the first stanza a fountain leaps from white marble in a double jet and flows away into drowsy summer valleys, its banks worn by a race of people "sadly gay". Ask the flowers and the air what the twin streams are, and they answer: Death and Love. In the second stanza two lonely spirits with withered wreaths wait at the gate of paradise, unable to enter. Where one appears, the other is near, and the youngest angel names them: Love and Death.

Lines to remember

And they'll answer Death and Love.

Are the spirits Love and Death.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 8The fountain
A "cloven, dancing jet" leaps from "milk-white marble" and foams for ever. Far off, the waters run slow and coiling through "drowsy valleys", where "The feet of summer dabble" in them, a playful picture of the season as a paddling child.
Lines 9 to 16Twin-born waters
The banks are worn by "a people sadly gay", made by a laughing Titan "of fire and clay": humankind. The flowers and the air, asked what the "twin-born waters" are, give the answer that closes the stanza: "Death and Love".
Lines 17 to 26At the gate
Two lonely spirits carrying "wreaths of withered flowers" wait before the gate of paradise. They may not pass, this "Poor earth-enkindled pair", and many spirits are sad to leave them there, staring at their faded flowers. The repeated line about the wreaths stresses their long waiting.
Lines 27 to 32Never far apart
The poem turns to the reader: if one of them rises beside you, "The other is not far." The youngest angel, speaking "with bated breath", gives their names, and the order is now reversed: "the spirits Love and Death".

Themes

Love and death

The whole poem rests on one idea: love and death are twins, born from the same source. The fountain is "cloven", a single jet split in two, and the spirits wait together. The answer "Death and Love" at the end of the first stanza becomes "Love and Death" at the end of the second, as if each could lead.

Earth and heaven

Both of these powers belong to earth. People are made "of fire and clay", the spirits are "earth-enkindled", lit on earth, and they cannot enter paradise. Their wreaths are withered and their flowers "dull and faded": love and death rule the mortal world and stop at heaven's gate.

Context

This is one of the early poems that Yeats left out of his later collections. The "Titan" who made people "of fire and clay" recalls Prometheus, who in Greek myth shaped humans from clay and stole fire for them. The mix of classical myth with Christian angels and "Mary's garden" is typical of his very first poems, before he turned to Irish legend.

Form

Two sixteen-line stanzas of short three-beat lines. The even lines rhyme ("jet" and "fret", "slow" and "blow", "breath" and "Death"), while the odd lines, most ending on a soft unstressed syllable, go unrhymed. Each stanza ends with the question answered: the same two names, in reversed order.