The Folly of being Comforted

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1903from In the Seven Woods14 lines

One that is ever kind said yesterday:“Your well-beloved’s hair has threads of grey,And little shadows come about her eyes;Time can but make it easier to be wiseThough now it seem impossible, and soPatience is all that you have need of.”No,I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain,Time can but make her beauty over again:Because of that great nobleness of hersThe fire that stirs about her, when she stirsBurns but more clearly. O she had not these ways,When all the wild summer was in her gaze.O heart! O heart! if she’d but turn her head,You’d know the folly of being comforted.

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

In brief

Summary

A kind friend's comfort fails against a lover's fierce devotion.

A kind friend tells the speaker that the woman he loves is ageing: there are "threads of grey" in her hair and "little shadows" round her eyes, so time will make it easier to be wise and let her go. His heart answers "No". Time will only make her beauty new again, because of her "great nobleness", and the fire about her burns more clearly now than when "all the wild summer was in her gaze". The last couplet speaks to the heart itself: if she only turned her head, it would know how foolish it was to be comforted.

Lines to remember

When all the wild summer was in her gaze.

O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,

You'd know the folly of being comforted.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 6The friend's comfort
Someone "ever kind" offers sensible consolation: she is ageing, with "threads of grey" and "little shadows" about her eyes, so time will make wisdom easier. "Patience is all that you have need of", the friend says. Line 6 is split on the page, and the answer "No" breaks in at once.
Lines 7 to 12The heart's reply
The heart refuses: "I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain". Time will only "make her beauty over again", and because of her "great nobleness" the fire "that stirs about her, when she stirs" burns more clearly with age. She had none of this, it says, when she was young and wild.
Lines 13 to 14O heart
The final couplet turns to the heart itself: "O heart! O heart!" If she would only turn her head, it would know "the folly of being comforted". One glance from her would undo any consolation.

Themes

Love and ageing

The friend assumes that ageing will end love: grey hair and shadows should make it "easier to be wise". The heart argues the opposite. Age has given her beauty a new depth, and the fire around her "Burns but more clearly". The poem honours a love that sees more in her as she grows older, not less.

Reason and feeling

The poem is a small debate. The friend speaks for common sense, patience and time; the heart speaks for passion, in exclamations and a broken line. Feeling wins outright. The title turns the usual view upside down: here it is comfort, not passion, that is folly.

Context

Collected in In the Seven Woods (1903), the first book from his sisters' Dun Emer Press, which also included "Adam's Curse". It is usually read as a poem about Maud Gonne, whom Yeats had loved since 1889 and who married John MacBride in February 1903. The "One that is ever kind" is never named in the poem.

Form

Fourteen lines, like a sonnet, but written in rhyming couplets ("yesterday" and "grey", "hers" and "stirs", "head" and "comforted"). Line 6 is split between two voices, marking the turn from the friend to the heart. The exclamations of line 13 break open the calm, reasoned couplets.

Minor verbal revisions after 1903.