The Countess Cathleen in Paradise
Earlier titled "A Dream of a Blessed Spirit"
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Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.
In brief
SummaryA soul freed from earthly sorrow dances among the angels.
The poem follows the Countess Cathleen, heroine of Yeats's play, from her burial to her welcome in heaven. The first stanza lays her body in the grave, leaving its "coloured pride" under grass and clover. The second tells the mourners to put away her fine clothes: she has been "Bathed in flaming founts of duty" and needs no "haughty dress" now. The third wonders whether Mary's kiss put the music in her face, yet she still walks shyly, with "earth's old timid grace". In the last stanza she is a glimmering dancer among seven angels, and all heaven bows. The short, tripping lines turn a funeral into a dance.
Lines to remember
All the heavy days are over;
Flame to flame and wing to wing.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 4Laid to rest
The poem opens after death: "All the heavy days are over". The body, with its "coloured pride" of beauty and rank, is left under "the grass and clover", the feet "laid side by side" in the old way of laying out the dead. The tone is calm rather than grieving.
Lines 5 to 8Putting away the dress
Her soul has been "Bathed in flaming founts of duty", washed clean by the fire of what she did for others, so she will not want a "haughty dress" again. The mourners are told to carry her "mournful beauty" away to the "scented oaken press", the wardrobe.
Lines 9 to 12Shy in heaven
The speaker wonders whether "the kiss of Mother Mary" put the music in her face. Yet she still goes "with footsteps wary", keeping "earth's old timid grace". Even in paradise she carries the modesty of a mortal woman.
Lines 13 to 16The dance
She is now "a dancer glimmering" among "angels seven". The last two lines widen the view: all the heavens bow down, and the paired phrases of "Flame to flame and wing to wing" make the close sound like a ring of dancers joining hands.
Themes
Sacrifice and grace
The poem never tells Cathleen's story, but "flaming founts of duty" points to it: she gave everything for others, and heaven receives her. There is no judgement scene. Instead the reward is shown as music in her face and a dance among angels, a joyful picture of salvation built from light, flame and movement rather than doctrine.
Body and soul
The first half deals with what is left behind: the body under the clover, the dress in the press. The second half follows the soul. Yet the two are not wholly separate. In heaven she still has "earth's old timid grace", as if the best of her earthly self has gone with her into paradise.
Context
Cathleen is the heroine of Yeats's verse play The Countess Cathleen, first printed as The Countess Kathleen in 1892. In it she sells her soul to demons so that her starving people can be fed, and at the end she is taken into heaven because she acted out of love. This lyric imagines that ending: her burial, and her welcome among the angels.
The poem first appeared in book form in The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics (1892), among the lyrics Yeats later grouped as "The Rose", under the title "A Dream of a Blessed Spirit". He rewrote and retitled it in 1925, so thoroughly that he called it "almost a new poem".
Form
Four quatrains rhyming ABAB, in short seven- and eight-syllable lines with a falling, trochaic beat ("All the heavy days are over"). Two-syllable rhymes ("over", "clover"; "duty", "beauty") alternate with one-syllable ones, giving the lines a light, song-like swing that suits a poem ending in a dance.
Rewritten and retitled in 1925. Earlier 'A Dream of a Blessed Spirit' (Gutenberg 38877, 49608); Yeats's note says it is 'so much rewritten that it is almost a new poem'.
