The Arrow

The poet mourns the first, fierce beauty of the woman he loves.

The thought of her beauty has lodged in him like an arrow "in my marrow". He remembers her as she was when first grown a woman, tall and noble, with a face and body "Delicate in colour as apple blossom", a beauty so great that "no man may look upon her". Her beauty now is "kinder", he admits, gentler and easier to be near. Yet he could weep that the old beauty is "out of season". Eight short lines hold both admiration and grief for what time has changed.

Line by line

1. Lines 1 to 2The arrow

   The thought of her beauty becomes an arrow "Made out of a wild thought", and it is lodged "in my marrow", as deep in the body as anything can go. The rhyme of "arrow" and "marrow" drives it home.

2. Lines 3 to 6First beauty

   The pronoun shifts from "your" to "her", as if he were remembering aloud. When she was "newly grown to be a woman", no man could bear to look at her: she was "Tall and noble", with face and bosom "Delicate in colour as apple blossom".

3. Lines 7 to 8Out of season

   "This beauty's kinder" admits that she is gentler now, easier to be near. But he could weep that the old beauty "is out of season", like blossom that belongs only to spring and cannot come back.

Themes

Context

The poem was collected in In the Seven Woods (1903). It is generally read as a poem about Maud Gonne, whom Yeats first met in January 1889 and loved for many years. In his memoirs he recalled her complexion at that first meeting as being like apple blossom, the image the poem uses for her young beauty.

Form

Four rhyming couplets in loose lines of four or five beats. Most of the rhymes end on an unstressed syllable ("arrow" and "marrow", "bosom" and "blossom", "reason" and "season"), which gives the lines a soft, falling close that suits the regret.