On Mr. Nettleship's Picture at the Royal Hibernian Academy

W. B. Yeatsfrom Early and uncollected poems16 lines

Yonder the sickle of the moon sails on,But here the Lioness licks her soft cubTender and fearless on her funeral pyre;Above, saliva dripping from his jaws,The Lion, the world’s great solitary, bendsLowly the head of his magnificenceAnd roars, mad with the touch of the unknown,Not as he shakes the forest; but a cryLow, long and musical. A dew-drop hungBright on a grass blade’s under side, might hearNor tremble to its fall. The fire sweeps roundRe-shining in his eyes. So ever movesThe flaming circle of the outer Law,Nor heeds the old, dim protest and the cryThe orb of the most inner living heartGives forth. He, the Eternal, works His will.

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

In brief

Summary

A painting of lions in a ring of fire, read as fate.

The poet describes a painting he saw in a Dublin exhibition. Under a crescent moon, a lioness licks her cub on what will be their funeral pyre, as fire closes round them. The lion bends his great head and roars, not with the roar that shakes a forest, but with a low, long, musical cry, so soft that a dew-drop would not fall. The fire is reflected in his eyes. The last lines turn the picture into a vision of the universe: an outer Law moves in its flaming circle and pays no heed to the cry of the living heart.

Lines to remember

Low, long and musical. A dew-drop hung

The flaming circle of the outer Law,

Line by line

Lines 1 to 3The lioness
Far off, "the sickle of the moon sails on", calm and indifferent. Close at hand the lioness licks her cub, "Tender and fearless on her funeral pyre". The word "pyre" tells us at once that the tenderness is happening at the edge of death.
Lines 4 to 11The lion's cry
The lion, "the world's great solitary", bows "the head of his magnificence" and roars, maddened by "the touch of the unknown". But the cry is "Low, long and musical", so quiet that a dew-drop hanging under a grass blade could hear it "Nor tremble to its fall".
Lines 12 to 16The outer Law
The fire sweeps round, "Re-shining in his eyes". From the picture the poem widens to the universe: the "flaming circle of the outer Law" moves on and ignores the protest of "the most inner living heart". The final sentence is flat and absolute: "He, the Eternal, works His will."

Themes

Fate and suffering

The lions are trapped in a ring of fire, and the poem reads that ring as "the outer Law", a power that moves in its circle and "heeds" nothing. Against it stands "the old, dim protest" of the living heart. The ending, "He, the Eternal, works His will", gives the victory to the Law without comment.

Grandeur and tenderness

The poem gives its animals great dignity. The lioness licks her cub "Tender and fearless"; the lion is "the world's great solitary" with a "magnificence" he bows. His cry is the surprise: not the roar that shakes a forest but a sound "Low, long and musical", as delicate as a dew-drop.

Context

This is one of the early poems that Yeats left out of his later collections. The Royal Hibernian Academy is Dublin's academy of art, which holds a yearly exhibition. The painter was John Trivett Nettleship, an English artist known for his pictures of lions and other wild animals and a friend of Yeats's father, the painter John Butler Yeats. The poem describes the picture and then draws from it a grim thought about fate.

Form

Sixteen lines of unrhymed blank verse in a single block. Most sentences run across line endings and stop in the middle of a line ("Low, long and musical. A dew-drop hung"), which keeps the movement restless, like the fire sweeping round. The last short sentence is the only one that sits still.