The Hero, the Girl, and the Fool

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1922from The Tower31 lines

Earlier titled "Cuchulain the Girl and the Fool"

The Girl

I rage at my own image in the glass,That’s so unlike myself that when you praise itIt is as though you praised another, or evenMocked me with praise of my mere opposite;And when I wake towards morn I dread myselfFor the heart cries that what deception winsCruelty must keep; therefore be warned and goIf you have seen that image and not the woman.

The Hero

I have raged at my own strength because you have loved it.

The Girl

If you are no more strength than I am beautyI had better find a convent and turn nun;A nun at least has all men’s reverenceAnd needs no cruelty.

The Hero

I have heard one sayThat men have reverence for their holinessAnd not themselves.

The Girl

Say on and sayThat only God has loved us for ourselves,But what care I that long for a man’s love?

The Fool by the Roadside

When my days that haveFrom cradle run to graveFrom grave to cradle run instead;When thoughts that a foolHas wound upon a spoolAre but loose thread, are but loose thread.
When cradle and spool are pastAnd I mere shade at lastCoagulate of stuffTransparent like the wind,I think that I may findA faithful love, a faithful love.

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

In brief

Summary

A girl, a hero and a fool ask who can love us for ourselves.

In this version the poem is a short dialogue. A Girl rages at her own beautiful image in the mirror: it is so unlike her real self that praise of it feels like mockery, and she warns her lover to go if he loves only the image. The Hero answers that he too has raged at the strength she loves. She thinks of becoming a nun, and they agree that only God loves us for ourselves. Then the Fool by the roadside sings: only after death, when his life has run backwards to the cradle and his thoughts have come unwound, may he find "A faithful love".

Lines to remember

I rage at my own image in the glass,
That only God has loved us for ourselves,
A faithful love, a faithful love.

Line by line

  1. Lines 1 to 8The Girl's warning

    "I rage at my own image in the glass": the Girl feels her beauty is a mask, "my mere opposite". Waking at dawn she dreads herself, because "what deception wins / Cruelty must keep". She tells her lover to go if he has seen "that image and not the woman".

  2. Line 9The Hero's reply

    The Hero's single line mirrors hers exactly: "I have raged at my own strength because you have loved it." He too is loved for a quality that is not quite himself, so the problem is shared by man and woman alike.

  3. Lines 10 to 19Only God

    If he is no more strength than she is beauty, she says, she had better "turn nun", since a nun has men's reverence without cruelty. He answers that men revere holiness, not the person. She takes up the thought: "only God has loved us for ourselves", but she longs for a man's love.

  4. Lines 20 to 25Life run backwards

    The Fool's song changes the music to short rhyming lines. When his days run "From grave to cradle" instead of cradle to grave, and the thoughts he has wound "upon a spool" come loose, the repeated "are but loose thread" sounds like something slowly unravelling.

  5. Lines 26 to 31A faithful love

    When cradle and spool are gone and he is "mere shade", made of stuff "Transparent like the wind", then he thinks he "may find / A faithful love". Only beyond the body and its images, the Fool suggests, can the true self be loved. The doubled last phrase rings like a refrain.

Themes

Image and self

The Girl's rage at "my own image in the glass" and the Hero's rage at "my own strength" are the same complaint: each is loved for a surface, beauty or strength, and not for the person underneath. The dialogue asks whether anyone can be loved for themselves, and the answer given is "only God".

Love after death

The Fool offers a strange hope. Life must first unwind, running "From grave to cradle", and the thoughts wound on the spool must become "loose thread". Only as a "mere shade", "Transparent like the wind", with no body to be mistaken for the self, may he find "A faithful love".

The wise fool

The two lovers argue in blank verse and get nowhere. The Fool, sitting by the road, answers them in a simple song, and his answer is the deepest in the poem. Fools in Yeats's plays often see what wiser people miss, and here the least important speaker has the last and wisest word.

Context

Yeats reworked this poem more than once. It first appeared in a book in 1922 as a dialogue called "Cuchulain the Girl and the Fool", so the Hero is the Irish hero Cuchulain. In The Tower (1928) it was titled "The Hero, the Girl, and the Fool", and that dialogue is the version printed here.

From 1933 Yeats kept only the Fool's closing song, revised to begin "When all works that have", under the title "The Fool by the Roadside". The Fool's picture of a soul after death living its life backwards is close to ideas Yeats worked out in A Vision. The Girl's thought that "only God" loves us for ourselves returns in "For Anne Gregory".

Form

Nineteen lines of dialogue in unrhymed five-beat lines (blank verse), with some lines split between two speakers, followed by the Fool's song: two six-line stanzas of short lines rhyming aabccb ("have" and "grave", "fool" and "spool"). Each stanza ends by repeating its last phrase, and the switch from argument to song marks the switch from confusion to vision.

This is the 1928 text from The Tower, a dialogue for three voices. In 1933 Yeats cut it to the Fool's closing song alone and retitled it The Fool by the Roadside; that later version is still in US copyright.

Related poems

View all poems
For Anne Gregory'Never shall a young man ...Read poem Another Song of a FoolThis great purple butterfly ...Read poem Before the World was madeIf I make the lashes dark ...Read poem