The Well and the Tree

W. B. Yeatsfrom Early and uncollected poems16 lines

“The Man that I praise,”Cries out the empty well,“Lives all his daysWhere a hand on the bellCan call the milch-cowsTo the comfortable door of his house.Who but an idiot would praiseDry stones in a well?”

“The Man that I praise,”Cries out the leafless tree,“Has married and staysBy an old hearth, and heOn naught has set storeBut children and dogs on the floor.Who but an idiot would praiseA withered tree?”

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

In brief

Summary

An empty well and a leafless tree praise the settled, comfortable life.

Two voices speak in turn. First an empty well praises a man who spends all his days at home, where a ring of the bell brings the milking cows to his door. Then a leafless tree praises a man who has married and settled by an old hearth, caring for nothing but children and dogs on the floor. Each speech ends in bitter self-mockery: only an idiot would praise dry stones in a well, or a withered tree. The barren things know they are barren, and they turn their praise to ordinary, fruitful life.

Lines to remember

Who but an idiot would praise

But children and dogs on the floor.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 8The empty well
"The Man that I praise" is someone rooted in comfort, living where "a hand on the bell" can call the "milch-cows" to "the comfortable door of his house". Then the well turns on itself: only an idiot, it says, would praise "Dry stones in a well".
Lines 9 to 16The leafless tree
The tree repeats the pattern. Its hero has married and stays "By an old hearth", setting store by nothing "But children and dogs on the floor". The stanza closes with the same scornful question, now aimed at "A withered tree".

Themes

Ordinary life

Both voices praise the settled, domestic man: home, cattle, marriage, hearth, children and dogs. Nothing heroic is admired. The "comfortable door" and the "old hearth" stand for a life of warmth and continuity that the well and the tree can only envy.

Barrenness

The speakers are images of barrenness: a well with no water, a tree with no leaves. They mock themselves as things no one in his right mind would praise. Set beside the hero's search for magic water in At the Hawk's Well, the song turns away from heroic longing towards plain human happiness.

Context

The lines are best known as the song the Musicians sing at the close of Yeats's dance play At the Hawk's Well, first performed in London in 1916. In the play an old man and the young hero Cuchulain wait beside a dry well whose magic water gives long life; the water rises only briefly, the hero misses it, and he goes off to fight instead. The song's praise of home and hearth is the play's quiet comment on that restless quest.

Form

Two eight-line stanzas built in parallel, in short lines of two or three beats. Each opens with the same line, "The Man that I praise", and closes with the same question, varied only in its object. The rhymes cross ("praise", "well", "days", "bell") and return to the first pair at the end, like a round.