Shepherd and Goatherd

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1919from The Wild Swans at Coole130 lines

Earlier titled "The Sad Shepherd"

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Shepherd

That cry’s from the first cuckoo of the year.I wished before it ceased.

Goatherd

Nor bird nor beastCould make me wish for anything this day,Being old, but that the old alone might die,And that would be against God’s Providence.Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?Never until this moment have we metWhere my goats browse on the scarce grass or leapFrom stone to stone.

Shepherd

I am looking for strayed sheep;Something has troubled me and in my troubleI let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,For rhyme can beat a measure out of troubleAnd make the daylight sweet once more; but whenI had driven every rhyme into its placeThe sheep had gone from theirs.

Goatherd

I know right wellWhat turned so good a shepherd from his charge.

Shepherd

He that was best in every country sportAnd every country craft, and of us allMost courteous to slow age and hasty youthIs dead.

Goatherd

The boy that brings my griddle cakeBrought the bare news.

Shepherd

He had thrown the crook awayAnd died in the great war beyond the sea.

Goatherd

He had often played his pipes among my hills,And when he played it was their loneliness,The exultation of their stone, that criedUnder his fingers.

Shepherd

I had it from his mother,And his own flock was browsing at the door.

Goatherd

How does she bear her grief? There is not a shepherdBut grows more gentle when he speaks her name,Remembering kindness done, and how can IThat found when I had neither goat nor grazingNew welcome and old wisdom at her fireTill winter blasts were gone, but speak of herEven before his children and his wife.

Shepherd

She goes about her house erect and calmBetween the pantry and the linen chest,Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooksHer labouring men, as though her darling lived,But for her grandson now; there is no changeBut such as I have seen upon her faceWatching our shepherd sports at harvest-timeWhen her son’s turn was over.

Goatherd

Sing your song,I too have rhymed my reveries, but youthIs hot to show whatever it has found,And till that’s done can neither work nor wait.Old goatherds and old goats, if in all elseYouth can excel them in accomplishment,Are learned in waiting.

Shepherd

You cannot but have seenThat he alone had gathered up no gear,Set carpenters to work on no wide table,On no long bench nor lofty milking shedAs others will, when first they take possession,But left the house as in his father’s timeAs though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo,No settled man. And now that he is goneThere’s nothing of him left but half a scoreOf sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes.

Goatherd

You have put the thought in rhyme.

Shepherd

I worked all dayAnd when ’twas done so little had I doneThat maybe “I am sorry” in plain proseHad sounded better to your mountain fancy.

He sings.

“Like the speckled bird that steersThousands of leagues oversea,And runs for a while or a while half-fliesUpon his yellow legs through our meadows,He stayed for a while; and weHad scarcely accustomed our earsTo his speech at the break of day,Had scarcely accustomed our eyesTo his shape at the rinsing poolAmong the evening shadows,When he vanished from ears and eyes.I had wished a dear thing on that dayI heard him first, but man is a fool.”

Goatherd

You sing as always of the natural life,And I that made like music in my youthHearing it now have sighed for that young manAnd certain lost companions of my own.

Shepherd

They say that on your barren mountain ridgeYou have measured out the road that the soul treadsWhen it has vanished from our natural eyes;That you have talked with apparitions.

Goatherd

IndeedMy daily thoughts since the first stupor of youthHave found the path my goat’s feet cannot find.

Shepherd

Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have pluckedSome medicable herb to make our griefLess bitter.

Goatherd

They have brought me from that ridgeSeed pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy.

Sings.

“He grows younger every secondThat were all his birthdays reckonedMuch too solemn seemed;Because of what he had dreamed,Or the ambitions that he served,Much too solemn and reserved.Jaunting, journeyingTo his own dayspring,He unpacks the loaded pern1Of all ’twas pain or joy to learn,Of all that he had made.The outrageous war shall fade;At some old winding whitethorn rootHe’ll practise on the shepherd’s flute,Or on the close-cropped grassCourt his shepherd lass,Or run where lads reform our daytimeTill that is their long shouting playtime;Knowledge he shall unwindThrough victories of the mind,Till, clambering at the cradle side,He dreams himself his mother’s pride,All knowledge lost in tranceOf sweeter ignorance.”

Shepherd

When I have shut these ewes and this old ramInto the fold, we’ll to the woods and thereCut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn barkBut put no name and leave them at her door.To know the mountain and the valley have grievedMay be a quiet thought to wife and mother,And children when they spring up shoulder high.

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

In brief

Summary

Two countrymen mourn a young man killed in the Great War.

A young Shepherd and an old Goatherd meet on a mountain on the day the first cuckoo sings. The Shepherd has let his sheep stray because he is troubled: the best man in the district, a piper, sportsman and craftsman, has died "in the great war beyond the sea". Together they praise the dead man and his grieving mother, who goes about her house "erect and calm" and now works for her grandson. Each then sings a song. The Shepherd's compares the dead man to a migrating bird that stayed only a while. The Goatherd, who is said to have talked with apparitions, sings of the dead man growing younger, unwinding his life back to the cradle. They agree to cut their rhymes on bark and leave them, unsigned, at the mother's door.

Lines to remember

The exultation of their stone, that cried
Of sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes.
He grows younger every second

Line by line

  1. Lines 1 to 10The first cuckoo

    The Shepherd made a wish on hearing the year's first cuckoo. The old Goatherd says nothing could make him wish today, except that "the old alone might die", which would go against Providence. The line quietly sets up the poem's grief: a young man has died before the old.

  2. Lines 11 to 19Strayed sheep

    The Shepherd tried to beat his trouble into rhyme, and while he drove "every rhyme into its place" his sheep strayed. The neat wordplay makes writing and shepherding mirror each other. The Goatherd already knows the cause.

  3. Lines 20 to 33The news

    In short exchanges they name the loss: the man best "in every country sport / And every country craft" is dead, having "thrown the crook away" to die in the war. The Goatherd remembers his piping, when the hills' loneliness and "The exultation of their stone" seemed to cry through him.

  4. Lines 34 to 48The mother

    The Goatherd recalls the mother's old kindness to him in hard winters. The Shepherd describes her grief: she walks "erect and calm" between pantry and linen chest and oversees her labourers for her grandson. The only change in her face is the one he saw at harvest sports when her son's turn was over.

  5. Lines 49 to 65No settled man

    The Goatherd, "learned in waiting", asks for the Shepherd's song. First the Shepherd notes that the dead man built nothing and changed nothing on the estate: he lived "as it were, a cuckoo, / No settled man", and left only "half a score" of pipe tunes.

  6. Lines 66 to 83The Shepherd's song

    After apologising that plain prose might have been better, the Shepherd sings. The dead man was like "the speckled bird" that flies in from overseas, stays a while in the meadows and vanishes before anyone is used to him. The song ends in self-reproach: "man is a fool".

  7. Lines 84 to 99The road of the soul

    The Goatherd sighs for his own lost companions. The Shepherd has heard that the old man has "measured out the road that the soul treads" after death and "talked with apparitions", and he asks for a healing thought. The Goatherd's thoughts have brought back flowers "that are not all wild poppy", not only forgetfulness.

  8. Lines 100 to 123The Goatherd's song

    In quick rhyming couplets the dead man "grows younger every second". He unpacks the "loaded pern" of his experience, forgets "The outrageous war", pipes and courts again, and unwinds knowledge until he lies by the cradle, lost in "sweeter ignorance". Death runs life backwards into innocence.

  9. Lines 124 to 130Rhymes on bark

    The Shepherd proposes that they cut their rhymes on strips of bark and leave them, nameless, at the mother's door. The poem ends on its humblest hope: that knowing "the mountain and the valley have grieved" may bring her some quiet comfort.

Themes

Grief and elegy

This is an elegy in pastoral dress: two countrymen mourn a dead companion, praise him, and offer songs. Grief is shown through small, exact things, the strayed sheep, the "bare news" brought with a griddle cake, the mother "erect and calm" at her linen chest. The unsigned rhymes at her door are the poem's picture of what elegy can do.

Youth and age

The Shepherd is young and "hot to show whatever it has found"; the Goatherd is old and "learned in waiting". Their contrast frames the central wrong of the war: that the young man died before the old. The Goatherd's song reverses the order again, letting the dead man grow "younger every second".

The afterlife

The Goatherd has "talked with apparitions" and found "the path my goat's feet cannot find". His song imagines the dead unwinding their lives, unpacking "all 'twas pain or joy to learn", until knowledge is lost "in trance / Of sweeter ignorance". Consolation comes not from heaven but from this strange, backward journey to childhood.

The restless spirit

The dead man was "a cuckoo, / No settled man". He built no tables or sheds and left the house as it was in his father's time. The Shepherd's migrating "speckled bird" makes the same point: a gifted, unsettled life that passed through the place and left behind only music.

Context

The poem is an elegy for Major Robert Gregory, Lady Gregory's only son, a painter, sportsman and pilot killed over Italy on 23 January 1918. The grieving mother is Lady Gregory, and the house left "as in his father's time" is Coole. Yeats also mourned Gregory in "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory" and "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death".

Yeats borrowed the old form of the pastoral elegy, in which shepherds mourn a dead companion in song. The poem was printed as "The Sad Shepherd" in the enlarged Wild Swans at Coole (1919) and renamed "Shepherd and Goatherd" from 1922; it is not the early poem of that name. Yeats's own note explains "pern" through the "pern mill" whose smoke he saw as a child in Sligo: a pern is a spool for thread.

Form

A dialogue in blank verse (unrhymed lines of five beats), with speeches that often share a single line. It contains two rhymed songs: the Shepherd's in loose, irregular lines, the Goatherd's in short, quick couplets ("second" and "reckoned", "served" and "reserved"). The shift from talk to song marks the move from news to mourning.

Yeats's own note

When I was a child at Sligo I could see above my grandfather’s trees a little column of smoke from “the pern mill,” and was told that “pern” was another name for the spool, as I was accustomed to call it, on which thread was wound. One could not see the chimney for the trees, and the smoke looked as if it came from the mountain, and one day a foreign sea-captain asked me if that was a burning mountain.

Titled 'The Sad Shepherd' in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919, Gutenberg 32491, Standard Ebooks); 'Shepherd and Goatherd' from 1922. Not the Crossways poem 'The Sad Shepherd'.

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