The Indian to his Love

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1889from Crossways20 lines

Earlier titled "An Indian Song"

The island dreams under the dawnAnd great boughs drop tranquillity;The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,A parrot sways upon a tree,Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.

Here we will moor our lonely shipAnd wander ever with woven hands,Murmuring softly lip to lip,Along the grass, along the sands,Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:

How we alone of mortals areHid under quiet bows apart,While our love grows an Indian star,A meteor of the burning heart,One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam and dart,

The heavy boughs, the burnished doveThat moans and sighs a hundred days:How when we die our shades will rove,When eve has hushed the feathered ways,With vapoury footsole among the water’s drowsy blaze.

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

In brief

Summary

A lover invites his beloved to a dreaming island far from the world.

An Indian lover describes an island at dawn: dreaming, heavy with tranquil boughs, with peahens dancing on a lawn and a parrot raging at its own reflection in the sea. Here, he says, the two of them will moor their ship and wander hand in hand, murmuring how far away "the unquiet lands" are. Their love will be like an Indian star, one with the tide and the gleaming wings around them. Even death holds no fear: when they die, their ghosts will wander at evening over the drowsy, glowing water. The poem is a lush dream of love as escape.

Lines to remember

The island dreams under the dawn

Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 5The island at dawn
The island itself "dreams under the dawn", and great boughs "drop tranquillity". Peahens dance and a parrot sways, "Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea": a comic, restless note in a still scene, and a hint of the vanity the lovers leave behind.
Lines 6 to 10Mooring the ship
"Here we will moor our lonely ship": the lovers arrive, and the rest of their life is pictured as wandering "with woven hands", "Murmuring softly lip to lip". The repeated "Murmuring" and "along" make the verse drift like their walking.
Lines 11 to 15An Indian star
They alone of mortals are hidden "under quiet bows apart". Their love grows into "an Indian star, / A meteor of the burning heart", one with the gleaming tide and the darting wings. Love here is not separate from nature but part of its brightness.
Lines 16 to 20Wandering shades
The list of lovely things continues, the heavy boughs and "the burnished dove", before the thought turns to death. Even then their shades will rove at evening "With vapoury footsole among the water's drowsy blaze". Death becomes one more gentle wandering.

Themes

Love as escape

The island is a refuge from "the unquiet lands", and the lovers are "alone of mortals", hidden "apart". Nothing troubles them but a parrot raging at his reflection. The poem imagines love as a place to withdraw to, a private world that even death cannot break up.

A dream landscape

Everything is drowsy and glowing: the island "dreams", the boughs "drop tranquillity", the water has a "drowsy blaze". Peahens, parrots, a "burnished dove" and an "enamelled sea" give the scene the richness of a painted picture. It is an imagined India, closer to a dream than to a real country.

Context

The poem was first collected in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (London, January 1889), and once carried the title "An Indian Song". Yeats placed it among the early lyrics he later called "Crossways", with two other Indian poems, "Anashuya and Vijaya" and "The Indian upon God". Its dream of an island refuge is shared by "To an Isle in the Water" in the same group, and looks ahead to "The Lake Isle of Innisfree".

Form

Four five-line stanzas rhyming ababb ("dawn", "tranquillity", "lawn", "tree", "sea"). The first four lines of each stanza are short, with four beats; the fifth stretches out to six. Each stanza ends on that long, lingering line, which slows the poem to the pace of the lovers' drifting.