Politics

An old poet would rather watch a girl than discuss world politics.

The speaker asks how, with a girl standing nearby, he can fix his mind on the politics of Rome, Russia or Spain. He grants that the experts may be right. Here is a travelled man who knows his subject, there a politician who has read and thought, and what they say about war may well be true. But the poem ends with a sudden cry of longing: he wishes he were young again and could hold her in his arms. Against the great public crises of the late 1930s Yeats sets private desire, and the regret of an old man who can no longer act on it.

Line by line

1. Lines 1 to 4That girl standing there

   The poem opens with a question. With a girl standing there, how can he keep his attention on Roman, Russian or Spanish politics? These were the storm centres of the late 1930s: Mussolini's Italy, Stalin's Soviet Union and the Spanish Civil War. The girl, simply by being present, outweighs them all.

2. Lines 5 to 8The experts

   He gives the other side its due. Here is a well-travelled man who knows what he is talking about, and there a politician who has read and thought. The tone is polite, even patient, but the flat phrasing keeps them at a distance, like voices at a party while his eyes are elsewhere.

3. Lines 9 to 12Young again

   He even concedes that what they say about war may be true. Then the poem swerves on "But O" into a wish to be young and to hold her. The old-fashioned cry and the final exclamation make the ending both comic and sad: desire has outlasted youth.

Themes

Context

The poem was first published in Last Poems and Two Plays (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1939), which appeared a few months after Yeats's death in January 1939. It is one of the last poems he wrote. In the order Yeats drew up for his final poems it stands at the very end, so a short, wry love poem has the last word.

Yeats headed it with an epigraph from the German novelist Thomas Mann, to the effect that in our time the destiny of man presents its meaning in political terms. The poem is a reply. Europe was sliding towards another war, fascism and communism were in conflict, and Spain was at war with itself; Yeats answers the age's demand for political poetry with a wish to be young and in love.

Form

Twelve lines in one stanza, made of three four-line groups that alternate longer lines of about four beats with shorter lines of three, like a ballad. In each group the second and fourth lines rhyme ("fix" and "politics"). The easy rhythm keeps the tone light until the final rhyme turns the language of war into the language of love.

Studying this poem

What to focus on

• The contrast between the great public events named in the poem and the private pull of the girl.
• The tone of the poem: its humour, its politeness towards the experts and the sudden emotion of the last two lines.
• How the poem answers its epigraph from Thomas Mann, and the irony of its title.
• The treatment of age and desire, and how the poem connects with Yeats's other late poems about growing old.
• The simple ballad-like form, and the effect of the final rhyme linking war and love.

Key quotations

• that girl standing there

  The girl is not described at all, only placed in front of him. Her plain presence is enough to break his concentration on the crises of Europe.

• Roman or on Russian

  The named nations stand for the great political forces of the 1930s, fascist Italy and Soviet Russia. The alliteration makes them sound grand but remote.

• maybe what they say is true

  Yeats does not argue with the experts. The shrug of "maybe" concedes their point while showing that it does not touch what he really cares about.

• O that I were young again

  The emotional climax. The old-fashioned "O" of a love song reveals the speaker's age and regret, and turns a witty poem into a touching one.

All the Leaving Cert poems