The Chambermaid's Second Song
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1938. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2034, 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 2034.
It begins: From pleasure of the bed
In brief
SummaryThe chambermaid bluntly sums up her lover after the night.
The chambermaid's second song is six lines long and far more blunt than her first. After the pleasure of the bed, she says, the man is dull, his body limp and his spirit fled and blind. Each observation ends on the same comparison with a worm. Where her first song blessed the sleeper, this one strips away any romance and leaves only the spent body.
Lines to remember
Blind as a worm.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 4After pleasure
After the pleasure of the bed the man is dull, and his sexual organ limp. Each line pair ends on the same worm comparison, so the song reads like a mocking chant rather than a love lyric.
Lines 5 to 6Spirit fled
Last comes his spirit, which has fled and is blind. The worm now describes his soul as well as his body, and the song ends on a flat, final note.
Themes
Desire spent
The song describes what is left after desire: dullness, limpness and blindness. It answers the idealised love of "The Three Bushes" with plain physical fact, and the chambermaid, who knows the truth of the night, is the one allowed to say it.
Body and soul
The three lines of description move from the bed to the body to the spirit. All three end in the same worm, as if the soul were no grander than the flesh once passion is gone. It is a comic, earthy counterweight to the lady's anxious talk of soul and body.
Context
The poem was first published in New Poems (Cuala Press, Dublin, May 1938), as the last of the songs attached to "The Three Bushes". In that ballad the chambermaid takes her lady's place in the lover's bed in the dark. Her two songs close the group, and this one is among the frankest poems Yeats published.
Form
Six lines alternating three and two beats. The odd lines rhyme on "bed", "head" and "fled"; every even line ends on the same word, a stark repetition that works like a refrain. The short, hammering shape makes the song sound like a taunt.