Those Dancing Days are gone
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1932. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2028, 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 2028.
It begins: Come, let me sing into your ear
In brief
SummaryAn old man sings, careless of age, to a ragged old woman.
An old man sings into the ear of an old woman. Her dancing days and her silk and satin are gone; she crouches on a stone, wrapped in rags. However she curses, he will sing on, even though the rogue who pleased her most and the children he gave her are dead under a marble slab. He has worked out that a man who leans on a stick can drop all pretence and sing till he drops, to young woman or hag. Each stanza ends with his boast: he carries the sun in a golden cup and the moon in a silver bag.
Lines to remember
I carry the sun in a golden cup,
Line by line
Lines 1 to 8Silk and satin gone
He tells the woman her dancing days are over, her fine clothes gone; she crouches on a stone in a foul rag. The harshness is deliberate. Against it he sets the refrain, a riddling boast that he carries sun and moon in a golden cup and a silver bag.
Lines 9 to 16Under a marble flag
She may curse, but he will sing the song through. What does it matter that her best lover, the rogue who pleased her most, and the children he gave her sleep soundly under a marble gravestone. Loss is stated plainly, then answered with the same refrain.
Lines 17 to 24The freedom of age
He worked it out at noon that day: a man who leans on a stick can put away pretence and sing until he drops, to a young girl or an old hag. Age, far from silencing him, has freed his voice.
Themes
Age and song
The poem answers age with singing. The woman has lost beauty, lover and children, and the man leans on a stick, yet he claims the freedom to "put pretence away" and sing. Old age here is not a time of dignity or quiet but of rough, defiant energy.
Imagination's riches
The refrain's sun in a golden cup and moon in a silver bag are the singer's wealth: images, not possessions. Whatever has been lost, the poet carries the heavens with him. The lines recall the silver apples of the moon and golden apples of the sun at the end of "The Song of Wandering Aengus".
Context
Part of the sequence "Words for Music Perhaps", first gathered in Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (Cuala Press, 1932) and collected in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1933). The sequence of short songs, which includes the Crazy Jane poems, was written as Yeats entered his late sixties, and many of its voices are old, poor and outspoken.
Form
Three eight-line stanzas in short lines of three or four beats, rhyming ABABCDCD, the last two lines forming a fixed refrain. The lilting tune and the jaunty refrain clash with the bleak images of rags and graves, which is the point: song rises above decay.
