The Choice
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1932. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2028, 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 2028.
It begins: The intellect of man is forced to choose
In brief
SummaryAn artist must choose between a perfect life and perfect work.
The poem states a hard law in its opening lines: the human mind must choose between perfecting its life and perfecting its work. Whoever chooses the work gives up the hope of heaven and ends his days raging in darkness. Then the poem shrugs and asks what it all comes to when the story is over. Lucky or not, the labour leaves its mark, and the mark is either the old worry of an empty purse, or vanity by day and remorse by night.
Lines to remember
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
The intellect of man is forced to choose
Line by line
Lines 1 to 4Life or work
A general law, stated like a proof: the mind has no option but to choose. To choose the work is to refuse a "heavenly mansion", the place promised to the righteous in the Gospels, and to be left in darkness, still angry and striving.
Lines 5 to 8What's the news
The tone drops to the colloquial with a blunt question about the outcome. The answer is deflating: whatever the luck, the toil marks the worker, either with poverty or with the round of daytime self-regard and night-time regret.
Themes
Art and life
The famous second line names a dilemma Yeats lived with: the artist who gives everything to the work may neglect the life, and lose the spiritual reward too. The poem does not say which choice is right. It suggests that both leave scars, and that the work, once chosen, keeps its maker restless to the end.
Disillusion
After the grand terms of the first half, heaven and darkness, the second half becomes wry and worldly. An empty purse and a sleepless conscience are ordinary disappointments. The shift in register shows a man old enough to doubt that any great choice brings the reward it seems to promise.
Context
The poem was collected in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1933). It began life as a stanza of "Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931", the elegy for Lady Gregory's house, before Yeats lifted it out to stand on its own. Its second line has become one of his most quoted statements about the cost of a life given to art.
Form
A single eight-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ABABABCC, the ottava rima Yeats used for many of his later meditative poems. The alternating rhymes carry the argument forward and the closing couplet delivers the verdict. The balanced pairing of day and night in the last line gives the ending an epigram's finality.
