The Apparitions
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1939. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2035, 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 2035.
It begins: Because there is safety in derision
In brief
SummaryAn old man counts his ghosts and faces the growing Night.
Three short stanzas, each ending on the same strange refrain. The speaker says he has talked about an apparition with deliberate mockery, because derision is safe, and he made no effort to convince sensible people. He treasures his long-planned half solitude, sitting up half the night with a friend tactful enough not to show when he makes no sense. In the last stanza he says an old man's joy grows deeper day by day and his empty heart is full at last, but he needs all that strength against the increasing Night and its mystery and fright. Each time the refrain returns: he has seen fifteen apparitions, and the worst was a coat on a coat-hanger.
Lines to remember
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 8Safety in derision
He spoke of an apparition in a mocking way, since mockery protects the speaker. He did not try to persuade or seem plausible, distrusting the public gaze whether bold or sly. The refrain follows: fifteen apparitions, the worst an empty coat on a hanger.
Lines 9 to 16Half solitude
Nothing is as good as the half solitude he has long planned, late nights with a friend who has the wit not to let his face show when the speaker becomes unintelligible. The refrain returns, its eerie image now set against this cosy, private scene.
Lines 17 to 24The increasing Night
An old man's joy deepens day after day, and his empty heart is full at last. But he needs all that strength, because the Night is growing and opening its mystery and fright. The final refrain lands with more weight: the empty coat looks like a body with no one inside.
Themes
Facing death
The capital N of "Night" makes it more than darkness: it is death drawing closer. The old man's joy and full heart give him strength, but he needs "all that strength". The poem admits fear without giving in to it, holding joy and dread together.
The supernatural
Yeats spent his life investigating ghosts and visions, and here he speaks of fifteen apparitions as matter of fact. Yet he talks of them in mockery, wary of sceptical listeners. The worst apparition is not a phantom but an empty coat: the most frightening thing is emptiness where a person should be.
Old age
The poem gives a gentle picture of late life: half solitude, a loyal friend, late conversation, a heart that has filled at last. Growing old brings deeper joy as well as closer darkness, a balance many of Yeats's last poems try to strike.
Context
The poem was first published in Last Poems and Two Plays (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1939), written in the last years of Yeats's life. His interest in ghosts and the spirit world ran from his youth, through the Golden Dawn and spiritualist seances, to the automatic writing that shaped A Vision.
Like "An Acre of Grass" and "What Then?", the poem shows the ageing poet taking stock of his life, and it looks at death with both courage and unease. Its bare, repeated refrain has the plainness of a folk song, a manner Yeats often chose in his last poems.
Form
Three eight-line stanzas: six short four-beat lines in rhyming couplets (derision and apparition, night and wit), followed by a two-line refrain that does not rhyme. The loose, unrhymed refrain breaks the neat couplets each time, and its long, awkward last word lets the strange image linger.
