Mohini Chatterjee

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1932from The Winding Stair and Other Poems

About the text

Yeats first published this poem in 1932. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2028, 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 2028.

It begins: I asked if I should pray

In brief

Summary

An Indian sage's teaching on rebirth, and the old Yeats's commentary.

Yeats recalls asking the Brahmin Mohini Chatterjee whether he should pray. The answer was to pray for nothing, but to say each night that he had been a king and a slave, a fool, a rascal and a knave, everything there is, and that countless lovers had lain on his breast. Chatterjee spoke these words, or words like them, to calm a turbulent young man. Now Yeats adds his own commentary: through endless rebirths, old lovers may yet have all that time denied them. Grave is heaped on grave and birth on birth, like cannon fire that thunders time away, until the hour of birth and the hour of death meet and, as the sages say, men dance on deathless feet.

Lines to remember

Men dance on deathless feet.

Birth-hour and death-hour meet,

Line by line

Lines 1 to 11Pray for nothing
Yeats asked whether he should pray. The Brahmin told him to pray for nothing, but to say each night in bed that he had been a king and a slave, a fool, a rascal and a knave, that there was nothing he had not been, and that a myriad heads had lain on his breast. Through many lives every role and every love becomes his own.
Lines 12 to 15A boy's turbulent days
The teaching was meant to bring peace to the turbulent days of a boy, the young Yeats. He does not claim to remember it exactly: Chatterjee spoke these words, or words like them. The admission gives the poem a candid, conversational tone.
Lines 16 to 22Grave on grave
Yeats adds a commentary of his own. Old lovers may yet have everything time denied them, for grave is heaped on grave so that they may be satisfied. Over the blackened earth the old troops parade, as if the dead of every war return to march again.
Lines 23 to 28Deathless feet
Birth heaped on birth becomes a cannonade that thunders time away, until the hour of birth and the hour of death meet. Or, as the great sages say, men dance on "deathless feet". The poem ends in celebration: the endless cycle of lives is not a burden but a dance.

Themes

Reincarnation

The poem's teaching is that each soul lives many lives and so has been everything: king, slave, fool, lover. That knowledge frees the young man from anxious prayer. In the commentary, rebirth becomes a promise that nothing is finally lost: lovers parted in one life may be united in another.

Time and eternity

The second part turns rebirth into an assault on time itself. Births and graves pile up like a bombardment that thunders time away, until birth and death meet and cancel out. What is left is the dance "on deathless feet", an image of eternity reached not by escaping life but by living it again and again.

Youth and age

The poem sets the boy who heard the teaching against the old man who comments on it. The young Yeats needed calming; the old Yeats finds in the same idea a fierce, military energy, with troops, cannonade and thunder. Age has turned a lesson in acceptance into a hymn of defiance against death.

Context

Mohini Chatterjee was a young Bengali Brahmin and Theosophist who visited Dublin in the mid-1880s, when Yeats was about twenty, and talked with him and his friends about Hindu philosophy. His teaching on rebirth and on the unreality of the world left a lasting mark on Yeats's thought.

The poem was collected in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1933), more than forty years after that meeting. In the book it sits near "At Algeciras, a Meditation upon Death" and "Byzantium", poems in which the older Yeats faces death and imagines what lies beyond it. The same belief opens section II of "Under Ben Bulben".

Form

Twenty-eight short lines of about three beats in two stanzas of 11 and 17 lines, rhyming alternately throughout ("pray" and "say", "king" and "anything"). The first stanza holds the remembered teaching; the second, the old poet's commentary. The steady, drumming rhythm suits the parading troops and cannonade of the second part.