The Mask

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1910from The Green Helmet and Other Poems15 lines

Earlier titled "A Lyric from an Unpublished Play"

“Put off that mask of burning goldWith emerald eyes.”“O no, my dear, you make so boldTo find if hearts be wild and wise,And yet not cold.”

“I would but find what’s there to find,Love or deceit.”“It was the mask engaged your mind,And after set your heart to beat,Not what’s behind.”

“But lest you are my enemy,I must enquire.”“O no, my dear, let all that be,What matter, so there is but fireIn you, in me?”

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

In brief

Summary

Two lovers argue over whether to look behind a golden mask.

A dialogue in three short stanzas. One lover asks the other to take off a "mask of burning gold" with "emerald eyes". The masked one refuses: it is too bold to want to find out whether the heart beneath is "wild and wise" and warm as well. The questioner only wants the truth, love or deceit. The answer is that the mask, not the face, first caught the questioner's mind and made the heart beat. When the questioner fears an enemy may be hidden there, the masked lover waves the doubt away: all that matters is that there is fire in both of them.

Lines to remember

"Put off that mask of burning gold

It was the mask engaged your mind,

Line by line

Lines 1 to 5Take it off
The first speaker asks for the mask to come off, and the mask itself is dazzling: "burning gold" and "emerald eyes". The reply, "O no, my dear", is affectionate but firm. To test whether the heart is warm as well as "wild and wise" is to "make so bold", to presume.
Lines 6 to 10What lies behind
The questioner claims a simple aim: to find "Love or deceit". The masked one answers with the poem's central idea: "It was the mask engaged your mind". The questioner fell in love with the appearance, so there is no point now in hunting for what is "behind".
Lines 11 to 15Only the fire
A darker worry surfaces: the masked lover might be an "enemy". Again comes "O no, my dear", and the question is set aside. The closing lines ask what any of it matters, "so there is but fire" in both of them. Passion counts for more than knowledge.

Themes

The mask

The mask is more than a disguise here: "It was the mask engaged your mind", so the mask is what was loved. Yeats returned to the idea of the mask for the rest of his life, as a chosen self that a person puts on and grows into, and this song is one of its earliest and lightest statements.

Love and knowledge

The first speaker wants certainty: "Love or deceit", friend or "enemy". The masked one refuses to give it. Love, in this view, does not depend on knowing the other person completely, and searching behind the mask may even destroy what drew the lover in. What counts is the shared "fire".

Context

In the Cuala Green Helmet of 1910 the poem was called "A Lyric from an Unpublished Play". The play was The Player Queen, which Yeats worked on for many years, and the song belongs to it. The mask became one of his central ideas: in the essay Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918) he wrote at length about the mask, the daimon and the self a person struggles to become.

Form

Three five-line stanzas rhymed ABABA. Long lines of four beats alternate with short lines of two ("With emerald eyes", "Love or deceit", "I must enquire"), and each stanza closes on a short line. The quick exchanges between the two voices give the poem the feel of a sung duet.

Titled 'A Lyric from an Unpublished Play' in 1910; the song is from The Player Queen.