The Lover asks Forgiveness because of his Many Moods

A changeable lover asks his beloved to forgive his restless heart.

The speaker admits that his "importunate heart" may trouble her with light words and flickering hopes. If it does, she should crumple the rose in her hair, cover her lips with "odorous twilight" and speak a long invocation to the "Hearts of wind-blown flame" and to the ancient winds. These winds carried murmuring and longing from marble cities and faery lands, from battle banners and queens, from Niamh above the tide and the place where the last Phoenix died. Having spoken, she is to cover her breast with her hair and sigh for "all things longing for rest".

Line by line

1. Lines 1 to 4The troubling heart

   He foresees that his "importunate heart", insistent and demanding, will trouble her peace with "words lighter than air" and hopes that "flicker and cease". His answer is a strange instruction: "Crumple the rose in your hair".

2. Lines 5 to 8What she should say

   She is to cover her lips "with odorous twilight" and address the "Hearts of wind-blown flame" and the "Winds, elder than changing of night and day". The winds are older than time itself, and they carry "murmuring and longing".

3. Lines 9 to 12Cities and banners

   The winds came from "marble cities loud with tabors of old", from "dove-grey faery lands", from battle banners folded "fold upon purple fold" and from queens "wrought with glimmering hands". The images are rich and far off, like scenes in old tapestries.

4. Lines 13 to 20Niamh and the Phoenix

   They saw "young Niamh hover with love-lorn face" over the tide, and lingered where "the last Phoenix died". The speech ends by calling all hearts "Piteous", forever "changing till change be dead", and the long invocation closes.

5. Lines 21 to 24Rest

   After the speech she is to cover "the pale blossoms of your breast" with her "dim heavy hair" and sigh "for all things longing for rest". The poem ends in the same "odorous twilight" with which it began.

Themes

Context

The poem was collected in The Wind Among the Reeds (Elkin Mathews, London, 1899) as "Michael Robartes asks Forgiveness because of his many Moods". Michael Robartes was a mystic from Yeats's stories of the 1890s. From 1906 the name was dropped and the speaker became "The Lover".

Niamh is the faery woman of Irish legend who carried Oisin away to the Land of the Young, the story Yeats had told in "The Wanderings of Oisin" (1889). Moods were an important idea for Yeats in these years: another poem in the same book, "The Moods", treats them as fire-born, lasting powers.

Form

Twenty-four lines, long and short in turn, rhymed abab throughout ("peace", "air", "cease", "hair"). The long lines carry the lists and the short lines answer like a refrain. The whole invocation, lines 6 to 20, sits inside one pair of quotation marks, a single breath of speech.