Ribh considers Christian Love insufficient

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: Why should I seek for love or study it?

In brief

Summary

Ribh studies hatred as a way of stripping the soul bare for God.

Ribh refuses to study love: it belongs to God and is beyond human wit. Instead he studies hatred, a passion he can control, and uses it like a broom to sweep the soul clean. His hatred of man, woman or event is a light that lets the soul see its own impurities and imagine how it walked before them and will walk after them. At last the soul will turn in hatred even from every idea of God that humanity has had, for thought is only a garment, and "Hatred of God may bring the soul to God". At midnight she can keep nothing, and can only wait for her Master to give, show and live in her.

Lines to remember

Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.

I study hatred with great diligence,

Line by line

Lines 1 to 6Studying hatred
Why study love, which is of God and passes understanding? Ribh studies hatred diligently instead, because it is a passion in his own control. It works like a besom, a broom, sweeping from the soul everything that is not mind or sense.
Lines 7 to 12A light from the soul
His hatred of people and events is a light sent by his jealous soul. Freed from terror and deception, the soul can find its impurities and see how it might walk once they are gone, and how it walked before they began.
Lines 13 to 18Hatred of God
Then the delivered soul learns a darker knowledge and turns in hatred from every thought of God mankind has had. Thought is a garment and the soul a bride who cannot hide in such cheap finery. Hating God may be the way to reach Him.
Lines 19 to 24At stroke of midnight
At midnight the soul cannot bear any furniture, bodily or mental. The poem ends in four exclamations: she can take nothing until her Master gives, see nothing until He shows, know nothing until He bids, live only when He lives in her blood.

Themes

Emptying the soul

The poem follows the old mystical path of stripping away: first impurities, then even ideas of God, until the soul stands bare. Ribh's startling tool is hatred, which clears like a broom. Human notions of God are "trash and tinsel", clothes the bride must shed before her Master comes.

Grace

After all the soul's effort, the last stanza hands everything to God. She can take, look, know and live only when He gives, shows, bids and lives in her. The fierce self-discipline of hatred ends in total dependence, a surrender as complete as the love Ribh said he would not study.

Context

The poem is the fifth of the Supernatural Songs, spoken by Ribh, an old Irish hermit of Yeats's invention who is set against the orthodoxy of St Patrick. It 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). Its idea of reaching God by rejecting every image of God echoes a long tradition of negative mysticism.

Form

Four six-line stanzas of five-beat lines rhyming AABCCB. The first three stanzas argue steadily; the last breaks into four exclamations built on the same pattern, a rhetorical crescendo that turns argument into prayer.