The Lady's First Song
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1938. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2034, and this site is served partly from American servers. So for now we give the notes without the full text; it will appear here in 2034.
It begins: I turn round
In brief
SummaryThe lady of "The Three Bushes" confesses a love that shames her.
The lady speaks of what love has done to her. She turns round and round like a dumb animal in a show, knowing neither what she is nor where she is going. All her language has been beaten down into a single name. She is in love, and that is her shame. What hurts her soul, she says, is exactly what her soul adores, and it leaves her no better than a beast on all fours. Desire is felt as a humiliation she cannot escape.
Lines to remember
And that is my shame.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 4A beast in a show
She compares herself to a dumb animal turning in a show, gaped at and helpless. She no longer knows what she is or where she is going. Love has taken away her sense of self.
Lines 5 to 8One name
All her language has been beaten into one name, the name of the man she loves. The stanza ends in a blunt confession that love is her shame. The short lines make it sound forced out of her.
Lines 9 to 12What the soul adores
The paradox deepens: her soul adores the very thing that hurts it. Bodily desire, she feels, brings her down to the level of a beast on all fours. The animal image returns to close the song.
Themes
Love as shame
The lady is proud and chaste, so desire feels like a fall. She sees herself as an animal twice over, at the start and the end. The song explains why, in "The Three Bushes", she sends her chambermaid to her lover rather than go herself.
Soul and body
What hurts the soul is what the soul adores: the lady cannot separate spiritual love from bodily longing, and she is torn by the conflict. Her later songs in the group keep returning to how soul and body should share in love.
Context
The poem was first published in New Poems (Cuala Press, Dublin, May 1938). It is the first of three songs given to the lady of "The Three Bushes", a ballad in which she sends her chambermaid to her lover's bed in the dark in her place. Songs for the lover and the chambermaid follow, so the group tells one story from several sides.
Form
Twelve very short lines of two or three beats, rhymed on alternate lines ("show" and "go", "name" and "shame", "adores" and "fours"). The clipped lines and plain words give the song the sound of a confession made with difficulty.