That the Night come
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Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.
In brief
SummaryA restless woman longs for death like a bridegroom for night.
A woman lived in "storm and strife" because her soul so desired "what proud death may bring" that she could not bear the ordinary good of life. She lived like a king on his wedding day who packs the hours with banners, trumpets, drums and cannon to hurry time along until night, and his bride, arrive. The whole poem is a single sentence, rushing towards its short final line.
Lines to remember
She lived in storm and strife,
To bundle time away
That the night come.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 5Storm and strife
The woman cannot endure "The common good of life" because she longs for something greater that only "proud death" can bring. Death is pictured not as an end to fear but as a prize to be desired.
Lines 6 to 12The king's wedding day
The comparison fills the rest of the poem: a king crowds his wedding day with noise and display, "banneret and pennon, / Trumpet and kettledrum", only "To bundle time away". The night he waits for is his wedding night, so death becomes a longed-for union.
Themes
Passion and death
The poem joins desire and death: the woman wants death as a bridegroom wants his wedding night. Her restless public life, all "storm and strife", is only noise to fill the waiting, like the king's "outrageous cannon". The comparison makes her longing for death sound not morbid but eager, even festive, the climax of a life lived at full volume.
Impatience with ordinary life
"The common good of life" is not enough for her. The poem admires this pride and fears it at once: the heroic energy that makes her magnificent also makes her unable to rest in simple happiness. The phrase "bundle time away" shows how little the present means to someone who lives only for what is to come.
Context
The poem first appeared in a book in The Green Helmet and Other Poems (Macmillan, New York, 1912) and was later placed in Responsibilities. The woman is not named; the poem is usually read as a portrait of Maud Gonne, whose restless political life Yeats admired and feared in many poems of this period.
Form
Twelve short three-beat lines forming one sentence. The rhymes are spaced unevenly ("strife" and "life", "bring" and "king", "pennon" and "cannon"), and the last line, "That the night come", is cut short, landing abruptly after the noise of drums and guns.
