The Scholars

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1917from The Wild Swans at Coole12 lines

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,Old, learned, respectable bald headsEdit and annotate the linesThat young men, tossing on their beds,Rhymed out in love’s despairTo flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.

They’ll cough in the ink to the world’s end;Wear out the carpet with their shoesEarning respect; have no strange friend;If they have sinned nobody knows.Lord, what would they sayShould their Catullus walk that way?

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

In brief

Summary

Dry old scholars edit the passionate love poems of young men.

Old, respectable, bald-headed scholars spend their lives editing and annotating poems that young men wrote in the heat of love, tossing sleepless on their beds, to flatter a beautiful woman. The scholars cough over their ink, wear out the carpet, earn respect and keep no strange friends; if they have ever sinned, nobody knows. The poem ends with a mocking question: what would these men say if the poet they study, the Roman love poet Catullus, came walking down their corridor?

Lines to remember

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,

Lord, what would they say

Should their Catullus walk that way?

Line by line

Lines 1 to 6Bald heads and young men
The poem sets two groups side by side. The "Bald heads forgetful of their sins" edit and annotate; the young men "tossing on their beds" wrote the lines "in love's despair". The repeated "bald heads" turns the scholars into a comic row of shiny domes.
Lines 7 to 12If Catullus walked in
A string of dull activities follows, broken up by semicolons: coughing in the ink, wearing out the carpet, "Earning respect". Then comes the punchline, "Lord, what would they say / Should their Catullus walk that way?", which imagines the wild poet himself turning up among his editors.

Themes

Passion and learning

The poem sets the heat of the original poems against the coldness of the people who study them. The young poets wrote "in love's despair"; the scholars are "forgetful of their sins" and "have no strange friend". The possessive in "their Catullus" is the sharpest touch: they own him on paper but would not know him in the flesh.

Respectability

Everything about the scholars is safe and approved: "learned, respectable", "Earning respect". Even their sins, if they have any, are hidden: "nobody knows". Yeats mocks a life lived for reputation, which cannot understand poetry born from risk, desire and sleeplessness.

Context

The poem appeared in book form in The Wild Swans at Coole, published by the Cuala Press in 1917. It had first been printed in the Catholic Anthology of 1915, edited by Ezra Pound. Yeats later rewrote the second stanza, so the version in his final collected poems differs from the one printed here.

Catullus was a Roman poet of the first century BC whose love poems, many addressed to a woman he called Lesbia, are passionate, bitter and often coarse. They read as though written in the heat of the moment. That makes him an apt test for bald, respectable editors.

Form

Two six-line stanzas rhyming ABABCC, with lines of about four beats shortening to a final couplet. The couplets carry the weight: the first ends on "beauty's ignorant ear", the second on the comic question about Catullus, so each stanza closes on a sting.