The Fish

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1899from The Wind Among the Reeds8 lines

Earlier titled "Breasal the Fisherman", "The Fisherman"

Although you hide in the ebb and flowOf the pale tide when the moon has set,The people of coming days will knowAbout the casting out of my net,And how you have leaped times out of mindOver the little silver cords,And think that you were hard and unkind,And blame you with many bitter words.

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

In brief

Summary

A fisherman warns the fish that escapes him how history will judge it.

The speaker is a fisherman addressing the fish that keeps escaping him. It may hide in the ebb and flow of the tide after the moon has set, but "The people of coming days will know" about his net, and how the fish leaped over "the little silver cords" time after time. They will think it "hard and unkind" and blame it "with many bitter words". The fish reads naturally as a beloved who refuses to be caught, and the net as the poet's love, or his poetry. His revenge is the lasting record his verse will make.

Lines to remember

The people of coming days will know

And blame you with many bitter words.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4The hiding fish
"Although you hide" sets up a challenge. The fish slips away "in the ebb and flow" of a moonless tide, but "The people of coming days will know" about "the casting out of my net". Hiding now will not save it from being remembered.
Lines 5 to 8Future blame
The fish has leaped "times out of mind", again and again, over "the little silver cords" of the net. Readers to come will "think that you were hard and unkind" and blame it "with many bitter words". A love complaint becomes a quiet threat.

Themes

Unreturned love

Read as a love poem, the fish is a woman who always escapes and the net is the poet's pursuit. The images are delicate ("the pale tide", "the little silver cords") but the ending is sharp. His frustration shows in "times out of mind": the failures are too many to count.

Poetry and posterity

The poem knows it will outlast both of them. "The people of coming days" will read the story in these lines and take his side. As in "When You Are Old", poetry becomes a message to the future that settles what the present will not.

Context

The poem appeared in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) under the title "Breasal the Fisherman". Yeats later called it "The Fisherman", and finally "The Fish" in his Collected Poems (1933). It is a different poem from "The Fisherman" in The Wild Swans at Coole, which imagines Yeats's ideal Irish reader.

Form

Eight lines of four beats, rhymed ABABCDCD ("flow", "set", "know", "net"), in one flowing sentence. "Although" in line 1 is answered by "will know" in line 3, and the lines opening with "And" pile up the future blame.

Title changes: 'Breasal the Fisherman' (1899), 'The Fisherman' (1906-1908, Gutenberg 49608, Standard Ebooks), 'The Fish' (Collected Poems 1933). Not the Wild Swans poem 'The Fisherman'.