Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1934from A Full Moon in March

About the text

Yeats first published this poem in 1934. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2030, 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 2030.

It begins: Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night

In brief

Summary

An old hermit reads by the light of two dead lovers' embrace.

The first of the Supernatural Songs. Ribh, an ancient tonsured hermit, is found at night by the tomb of the legendary lovers Baile and Aillinn, reading an open book in the dark. Everyone knows their story and the apple and yew that grow over their bones, he says; tell instead what nobody has heard. Their miraculous death turned their bodies to pure substance, so that when they join it is not a touching of parts but whole meeting whole, like the love of angels, a light. Each year, on the anniversary of their death and first embrace, they meet above the tomb, and by the light of their union Ribh turns the pages of his holy book.

Lines to remember

For the intercourse of angels is a light

Nor straining joy, but whole is joined to whole;

Line by line

Lines 1 to 9Found in the dark
Ribh speaks to someone who has found him in the pitch-dark night, book open, and asks what he is doing. He is old and tonsured, his voice cracked by ninety years. There is no need to retell the famous tale of Baile and Aillinn, or of the apple and yew above their bones: carry away something new.
Lines 10 to 16Whole joined to whole
The miracle of their death turned bone and sinew into pure substance. When such bodies join there is no touching here or there, no straining, but whole joined to whole. The intercourse of angels is a light in which, for a moment, both lovers seem consumed.
Lines 17 to 27Reading by their light
On the anniversary of their death, which is also that of their first embrace, the lovers, purified by tragedy, rush together in the dark above the trees. Ribh's eyes, made eagle-like by water, herbs and solitary prayer, can see that light. It falls in a circle on the grass, broken by leaves, and he reads his holy book in it.

Themes

Sacred sexual love

The poem makes the lovers' embrace a holy thing. Freed from bodies, they unite completely, as angels do, and their union gives off light. The hermit, a Christian figure, reads his holy book by that light. Throughout the Supernatural Songs Yeats joins sexual love and the divine, where orthodox religion kept them apart.

Tragedy and transfiguration

Baile and Aillinn died of grief, and their tragedy is what purifies them. Death becomes the gateway to a more perfect union, renewed each year on its anniversary. The phrase "purified by tragedy" links the poem to Yeats's late belief that tragedy, faced fully, transfigures suffering into joy.

Context

The poem opens Supernatural Songs, a sequence of twelve poems, most of them spoken by or about Ribh, an old Irish hermit of Yeats's invention who is set against St Patrick's orthodoxy. The sequence first appeared in a book in The King of the Great Clock Tower, Commentaries and Poems (Cuala Press, 1934), and was collected in A Full Moon in March (Macmillan, 1935).

Yeats had told the story of Baile and Aillinn in his narrative poem of that name (1903). The lovers are tricked into believing each other dead and die of grief; a yew grows from Baile's grave and an apple tree from Aillinn's. Here Ribh stands under those two trees.

Form

Twenty-seven lines of blank verse (unrhymed five-beat lines) in three paragraphs, the dramatic monologue of an old man. The long, flowing sentences and run-on lines suit a speech that is half story, half revelation, and the plain opening slowly rises to the light of the last paragraph.