The Statesman's Holiday
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1939. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2035, 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 2035.
It begins: I lived among great houses
In brief
SummaryA great man quits public life to sing in the street.
A former statesman explains his holiday from greatness. He lived among the great houses and watched riches drive out rank and baser blood drive out better, until mind and body shrank. Good talk had gone, and those who knew what ailed the world said nothing. So he chose a better trade and sings. In the second stanza he mocks guesses at who he might be, from a Lord Chancellor to de Valéra or the King of Greece, and takes up a one-stringed Montenegrin lute. The last stanza shows him as a ragged street singer with a monkey on a chain. Every stanza ends on his one song, of tall dames walking in grass-green Avalon.
Lines to remember
Tall dames go walking in grass-green Avalon.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 8Among great houses
He lived among great houses and saw them decline: money pushed out rank, lesser blood pushed out better, and mind and body shrank. No Oscar ruled the table, and his friends, knowing that real conversation had gone, talked only of odds and ends.
Lines 9 to 13A better trade
Those who understood the world's sickness kept quiet. So he has taken up a better trade, singing night and morning. The refrain comes in for the first time: a single long line about tall ladies walking in the green paradise of Avalon, far from politics and dinner parties.
Lines 14 to 21Call me what you please
He teases his listeners with guesses at his identity. Is he a great Lord Chancellor who slept on the Woolsack, an officer who tore off his uniform, de Valéra, the King of Greece, or the man who made the motors? The dismissive answer is that they may call him anything they like.
Lines 22 to 26The Montenegrin lute
What matters is his instrument, a Montenegrin lute whose single old string makes him sweet music, and he delights to sing. One string is enough for a man who has only one song. The refrain returns.
Lines 27 to 39The street singer
The last stanza is a portrait in a string of "With" phrases: boys and girls around him, odd clothes, an old hat and patched shoes, a ragged bandit's cloak, a hawk's eye, a stiff back, a strutting turkey walk, a bag of pennies, a monkey on a chain, a cock's feather and an old foul tune. Then the refrain once more.
Themes
Decline of the great
The first stanza is a short history of social decay as Yeats saw it: riches replacing rank, base blood replacing better, conversation shrinking into small talk. This is the argument of much of his late prose, and the statesman's departure is a verdict on a world no longer worth governing.
Freedom of the singer
Giving up power, the statesman becomes a beggar-minstrel, proud, ragged and happy. The long list of "With" phrases enjoys his shabby splendour: bandit cloak, hawk's eye, turkey strut. Like Crazy Jane and the Wild Old Wicked Man, he finds freedom by stepping outside respectability.
Dream and refrain
His one song is of "grass-green Avalon", the paradise of Arthurian legend. The line is lovely, remote and has nothing to do with the rest of the poem, which is the point: after the noise of politics and money, he chooses a dream of beauty and repeats it night and morning.
Context
The poem first appeared in On the Boiler (Cuala Press, 1939), the pamphlet in which Yeats set out his late views on politics and society, and was collected in Last Poems and Two Plays (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1939). Yeats himself had served as a senator of the Irish Free State in the 1920s.
Éamon de Valéra, named in the poem, was then leading the Irish government. The other figures are left as types; "Oscar" is probably Oscar Wilde, a dazzling talker Yeats knew in his youth. The one-stringed lute probably recalls the Balkan fiddle that accompanied sung heroic tales.
Form
Three thirteen-line stanzas of short three-beat lines, loosely rhymed on alternate lines (rank and shrank, friends and ends), each closing on a long refrain line that breaks the pattern. The final stanza abandons sentences for a list of phrases, so the portrait builds up like a jaunty street song.