The Old Stone Cross
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: A statesman is an easy man
In brief
SummaryAn ancient ghost in a golden breastplate scorns modern politics, press and theatre.
A bitter little ballad spoken by a figure from the past, a man in a golden breastplate under an old stone cross. He mocks statesmen, who lie by habit, and journalists, who invent their lies and grab you by the throat; better to stay home with your beer and let the neighbours vote. In an age where everything breeds in the ditch, nobody can tell a happy man from a wretch, or folly from elegance. Last he turns on actors who drop the music of verse and think it more human to shuffle and groan.
Lines to remember
A statesman is an easy man,
Line by line
Lines 1 to 8Statesmen and journalists
The statesman tells his lies by rote; the journalist makes his up and forces them on you. The advice is to stay at home, drink your beer and leave voting to the neighbours. The refrain names the speaker, a warrior buried under an ancient cross.
Lines 9 to 16Bred in the ditch
This age and the next breed together in the ditch, so no one can tell a happy man from a passing wretch. When folly teams up with elegance, the two become impossible to tell apart. It is a picture of a culture that has lost its standards.
Lines 17 to 24Actors without music
The ghost saves his real anger for actors who speak verse without music, thinking it more human to shuffle, grunt and groan. They do not know what "unearthly stuff" completes a great scene. Here the ancient speaker voices Yeats's own theatre quarrels.
Themes
Contempt for modernity
Statesmen, journalists and democratic voting are all waved away. The speaker belongs to an older heroic world, and his view of the present is harsh and one-sided. The phrase about ages that "Engender in the ditch" gives the poem's picture of modern life: low, mixed and without distinction.
Art and theatre
The climax is not politics but acting. The last stanza defends the music of verse on stage against naturalistic mumbling. For the ghost, great drama is rounded by something unearthly, and to make it merely "human" is to lose it. The comic anticlimax, politics then actors, is part of the joke.
Context
First published in New Poems (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1938). In his last years Yeats wrote many ballads in a rough popular manner, often voicing his distaste for mass politics and the popular press. He had long argued, as a founder of the Abbey Theatre, that verse drama must be spoken as music, and the final stanza carries that old argument into the mouth of an ancient warrior.
Form
Three eight-line ballad stanzas: six lines alternating four and three beats, rhyming on the second, fourth and sixth lines (with half rhymes such as "spleen" and "groan"), then a two-line refrain. The refrain's unchanging image of the armoured ghost under the cross gives the grumbling an ancient, stony authority.