On Woman

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1917from The Wild Swans at Coole43 lines

May God be praised for womanThat gives up all her mind,A man may find in no manA friendship of her kindThat covers all he has broughtAs with her flesh and bone,Nor quarrels with a thoughtBecause it is not her own.

Though pedantry deniesIt’s plain the Bible meansThat Solomon grew wiseWhile talking with his queens.Yet never could, althoughThey say he counted grass,Count all the praises dueWhen Sheba was his lass,When she the iron wrought, orWhen from the smithy fireIt shuddered in the water:Harshness of their desireThat made them stretch and yawn,Pleasure that comes with sleep,Shudder that made them one.What else He give or keepGod grant me⁠—no, not here,For I am not so boldTo hope a thing so dearNow I am growing old,But when if the tale’s trueThe Pestle of the moonThat pounds up all anewBrings me to birth again⁠—To find what once I hadAnd know what once I have known,Until I am driven mad,Sleep driven from my bed,By tenderness and care,Pity, an aching head,Gnashing of teeth, despair;And all because of some onePerverse creature of chance,And live like SolomonThat Sheba led a dance.

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

In brief

Summary

A man praises woman's companionship and asks to relive love's torments.

The poem opens by thanking God for woman, whose friendship a man can find in no other man: she takes in everything he brings and never quarrels with a thought because it is not her own. The Bible, the poet says, shows that Solomon grew wise by talking with his queens, and above all with Sheba. Then the praise turns physical, in an image of iron tempered in water. The poet asks for such love, but not now that he is growing old. Instead he prays that, if he is reborn, he may find it again, with all its madness, sleeplessness and despair, and live like Solomon, whom Sheba "led a dance".

Lines to remember

May God be praised for woman

Shudder that made them one.

The Pestle of the moon

Line by line

Lines 1 to 8Praise for woman
The opening sounds like a grace before meals: "May God be praised for woman". Her friendship "covers all he has brought" as closely as "her flesh and bone", and, unlike a male friend, she "Nor quarrels with a thought / Because it is not her own".
Lines 9 to 16Solomon's queens
Ignoring "pedantry", he claims the Bible means "That Solomon grew wise / While talking with his queens". Even the wise king who "counted grass" could never count all the praises due to Sheba. The playful "his lass" brings the ancient queen down to earth.
Lines 17 to 23Iron in the water
The image of iron "wrought" at the smithy and then plunged, shuddering, into water stands for the lovers' union. The words move from "Harshness" through "stretch and yawn" and "sleep" to "Shudder that made them one": desire, rest, and a oneness that is both bodily and spiritual.
Lines 24 to 32Not here, but reborn
He begins to pray for such love, then stops himself: "no, not here", because he is "growing old". Instead he hopes for it after rebirth, when "The Pestle of the moon / That pounds up all anew" brings him back to life.
Lines 33 to 43Love's torments again
What he asks for is not simple happiness. He wants to be "driven mad" again, sleepless, aching, full of "Gnashing of teeth, despair", all because of "some one / Perverse creature of chance". The last line returns to Solomon, happily led a dance by Sheba.

Themes

Love and wisdom

The poem links wisdom to love: Solomon grew wise "While talking with his queens", and woman's friendship takes in all a man "has brought". The union of lovers, "Shudder that made them one", is also a union of minds. Love, for Yeats here, is a way of knowing.

Desire and suffering

The poet does not pray for an easy love. He asks to be "driven mad", to lose sleep, to suffer "Pity, an aching head, / Gnashing of teeth, despair". The pain is part of what he values, and "some one / Perverse creature of chance" is both blamed and longed for.

Age and rebirth

"Now I am growing old" rules out love in this life, at least the kind he means. His hope moves to a next life, pounded "up all anew" by "The Pestle of the moon". The idea of rebirth lets the ageing poet keep his longing without pretending he is young.

Context

The poem was collected in The Wild Swans at Coole, published by the Cuala Press in 1917. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, who in the Bible visits the wise king to test him with hard questions, were figures Yeats returned to in "Solomon to Sheba" and "Solomon and the Witch", often as images of a man and woman united in body and mind.

The "Pestle of the moon" points to the ideas about the moon and the soul's rebirth that Yeats was exploring in these years. The "Perverse creature of chance" is usually read as Maud Gonne, the woman Yeats loved for most of his life.

Form

Forty-three short lines of three beats, rhyming mostly in alternate lines ("mind" and "kind", "thought" and "brought", "denies" and "wise"). An opening stanza of eight lines is followed by one long, headlong verse paragraph whose single running sentence, full of interruptions and afterthoughts, carries the reader from praise to prayer to despair.