On hearing that the Students of our New University have joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature
Earlier titled "On hearing that the Students of our New University have joined the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Agitation against Immoral Literature", "On Hearing that the Students"
Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.
In brief
SummaryYeats mocks students who join a crusade against immoral books.
An epigram in four lines. The title sets the scene: students at the new university have joined a campaign against literature thought immoral. Yeats imagines Pride and Truth, two figures who would normally side with youth, laughing at the sight. Only here, he suggests, could they shake with laughter at the young keeping their reckless elders in check. The joke is that the usual roles are reversed: the young, who should be daring, have become the censors.
Lines to remember
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle-age.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 4Pride and Truth laugh
"Where, where but here" expects the answer nowhere: only in Ireland could this happen. Pride and Truth, who "long to give themselves for wage", at last find work: they "shake their wicked sides" laughing at youth "Restraining reckless middle-age".
Themes
Youth and age
The whole joke rests on reversal. Youth is expected to be reckless and middle age cautious; here the students are the ones "Restraining" their elders. By giving the word "reckless" to "middle-age", Yeats, then in his forties, casts himself and his generation as the true rebels.
Censorship
The title names the target: an "Agitation against Immoral Literature". Yeats does not argue with it. He simply lets "Pride and Truth" laugh, as if the campaign were too absurd for anything else. The "wicked sides" are a sly touch: the laughter itself would count as wicked in the censors' eyes.
Context
The poem was added to The Green Helmet and Other Poems in the enlarged Macmillan edition of 1912. The "new university" is the National University of Ireland, founded in 1908. An earlier, longer title said the students had also joined the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a Catholic nationalist society, which made the target plainer. Yeats spent much of these years defending writers, Synge above all, against pious and political outrage.
Form
One quatrain of four-beat lines rhymed ABAB ("Truth" and "youth", "wage" and "middle-age"). The whole poem is a single sentence, which gives it the snap of an epigram. Rhyming "youth" with "Truth" and ending on "middle-age" puts the two generations where the ear catches them.