The Spur

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1938from New Poems

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: You think it horrible that lust and rage

In brief

Summary

An old poet defends the lust and rage that drive his song.

Four lines answer a critic. Someone finds it horrible that lust and rage should still wait on the poet in his old age. He replies that they were no such trouble when he was young, and asks what else he has to drive him into poetry. The passions that might shame an old man are, for him, the spur that keeps him writing.

Lines to remember

What else have I to spur me into song?

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4Lust and rage
The first two lines report the objection, with the odd, courtly phrase that lust and rage "dance attention" on him, like servants. The third line admits they were milder in youth. The last line turns the charge into a defence: without them he would have nothing to write from.

Themes

Old age

The poem refuses the idea that old age should be calm and dignified. Yeats in his seventies claims his passions have grown stronger, not weaker, and he makes no apology. The same defiance runs through "An Acre of Grass", where he prays to be made an old man who is mad, and "Why should not Old Men be Mad?"

Poetry and passion

A spur drives a horse forward. Here lust and rage do the same to the poet, pricking him "into song". The poem treats them as useful rather than shameful: they are the fuel of art. It is a blunt statement of a belief that runs through all his late work.

Context

The poem was first published in book form in New Poems (1938), the last collection that Yeats saw through the press. Its stance is typical of that book, where the old poet repeatedly defends passion, anger and even foolishness as signs of life, in poems such as "The Wild Old Wicked Man" and "An Acre of Grass".

Form

Two rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter, the second rhyme only a near-rhyme ("young" and "song"). The brevity suits a retort. The poem is shaped as an exchange, the critic's view in the first line and the poet's answer in the rest, ending on a question that is really a challenge.