The Collar-bone of a Hare

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1917from The Wild Swans at Coole16 lines

Would I could cast a sail on the waterWhere many a king has goneAnd many a king’s daughter,And alight at the comely trees and the lawn,The playing upon pipes and the dancing,And learn that the best thing isTo change my loves while dancingAnd pay but a kiss for a kiss.

I would find by the edge of that waterThe collar-bone of a hareWorn thin by the lapping of water,And pierce it through with a gimlet and stareAt the old bitter world where they marry in churches,And laugh over the untroubled waterAt all who marry in churches,Through the white thin bone of a hare.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

A dreamer longs for an island of dancing and free love.

The speaker wishes he could sail across the water to a place where many kings and kings' daughters have gone before: a land of fine trees, lawns, piping and dancing, where the best thing is to change your loves while dancing and "pay but a kiss for a kiss". There, by the water's edge, he would find the collar-bone of a hare, worn thin by the waves, bore a hole in it, and look through it at "the old bitter world where they marry in churches", laughing at it from across the untroubled water.

Lines to remember

And pay but a kiss for a kiss.

At the old bitter world where they marry in churches,

Through the white thin bone of a hare.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 8The dancing island
"Would I could" makes the whole stanza a wish. The land beyond the water is full of kings, daughters, pipes and dancing, a place like the happy otherworld of Irish legend. Love there is light and equal: "pay but a kiss for a kiss".
Lines 9 to 16Through the bone
He imagines a hare's collar-bone, "Worn thin by the lapping of water", pierced "with a gimlet" to make a spyhole. Through it he would "stare" at the bitter world of church weddings and laugh. The small, strange object turns mockery into a kind of magic.

Themes

Escape to the otherworld

The island across the water, where "many a king has gone", recalls the lands of youth and pleasure in Irish legend. It is a dream of release: music, dancing and love without burden. The whole vision is framed as a wish, so the speaker never actually arrives.

Mockery of convention

The "old bitter world where they marry in churches" is the world of duty, vows and permanence. From the far side of "the untroubled water", seen through a tiny bone, it looks small and absurd. The repeated "marry in churches" sharpens the laughter.

Context

The poem was collected in The Wild Swans at Coole (Cuala Press, 1917). Its magic island echoes the Celtic otherworlds of Yeats's early poems, such as "The Wanderings of Oisin", but the tone is new: sharper, more playful and more mocking of the everyday world he wants to escape.

Form

Two eight-line stanzas of loose, swinging lines, mostly three or four beats. "Water" returns again and again as a rhyme word, like waves on a shore, and the second stanza begins and ends with "hare", framing the image of the bone.