Three Marching Songs
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: Remember all those renowned generations
In brief
SummaryThree rousing songs on Irish memory, leadership and dying for a cause.
Three songs, each with its own refrain, written to be sung on the march. The first calls on listeners to remember the generations who died or fled defending Ireland's soul, while the refrain answers that time amends old wrongs and the past should fade; if the living fail, it warns, the great names of Irish history will be mocked. The second asks whom men should follow: soldiers salute captains and nations need greatness above them, but what if there is nothing at the top? Its refrain is a father hushing a son about something marching through a haunted mountain pass. The third tells of a grandfather who sang on the gallows cart that a good strong cause beats money, girls and drink, until the rope cut him off mid-line.
Lines to remember
Remember all those renowned generations,
Robbers had taken his old tambourine,
Line by line
Lines 1 to 10Remember the generations
The first song calls up the famous generations who left their bodies to the wolves and their homes to the foxes, or hid in caves and holes, all to defend Ireland's soul. The refrain answers in another voice: be still, that was my father's song, time amends old wrong, let it fade.
Lines 11 to 20Death like a tune
The roll call deepens: those who sank in their blood, died on the scaffold, fled or stood their ground and took death like a tune played on an old tambourine. The same quieting refrain returns, now sounding more like weariness or doubt than wisdom.
Lines 21 to 30Fail, and history is rubbish
The stakes are stated: if the present generation fails, the whole great past becomes a trouble of fools. Those who come after will mock O'Donnell, both O'Neills, Emmet and Parnell. Against this warning the refrain sounds its advice to forget once more.
Lines 31 to 40Saluting the Captain
The second song opens on loyalty and rank. The soldier is proud to salute his Captain, the devotee kneels to his Lord, and Troy backed Helen and died adoring her. Great nations need something to look up to; otherwise a slave simply bows to a slave. The refrain has a son asking what marches through the mountain pass.
Lines 41 to 50The peasant's cot
The singers know what "rascal might" has defiled and what lofty innocence it has killed. Born in the peasant's cottage, where men forgive whatever fills the belly, they find the mind cannot forgive so easily. The father's reply in the refrain is "not yet": the pass is haunted, and no one knows what treads there.
Lines 51 to 60Nothing at the top
Doubt breaks in: what if there is nothing at the top, and where are the captains who govern mankind? A hollow tree falls to a blast of wind, and the wind becomes a marching wind, a March wind, any old tune. The song ends with the refrain's unanswered question about the pass.
Lines 61 to 70Song on the gallows
The third song tells of the speaker's grandfather singing on the cart beneath the gallows: money is good and a girl might be better, but strong blows delight the mind. The refrain gives a wild image of defiance: robbers had taken his old tambourine, so he took down the moon and rattled out a tune on it.
Lines 71 to 80What he had and lost
The grandfather's song lists his losses: a girl who went with another man, money gone in the night, drink that brought him sorrow. Only a good strong cause and blows are still a delight. The crowd around the gallows takes up the tune and cheers him on, and the refrain returns.
Lines 81 to 90The rope jerks
He starts his chorus a third time, but the rope jerks in the middle of "a good strong cause", and he sings no more. Still he kicks before he dies, out of pride. The song does not mourn him; it ends, like the others, on the refrain of the tambourine and the moon.
Themes
Memory and forgetting
The first song argues with itself. Its stanzas command the listener to remember the dead of Irish history; its refrain says time heals and the past should fade. Neither voice wins outright, but the warning that failure turns history into "rubbish" gives memory the harder, stronger case.
Leadership
The second song asks what makes people follow. Loyalty to a captain, a lord or a Helen can ennoble; without greatness above them, men are only slaves bowing to slaves. Then comes the fear that there may be "nothing up there at the top", no captains at all, and that any wind or any tune could sweep people along.
Defiance
The grandfather on the gallows has lost everything a man values, yet keeps his song, his cause and his pride to the end. His kick as he dies is absurd and heroic at once. It answers the first song's list of those who took death like a tune: this is what that looks like up close.
Context
The songs were first published in Last Poems and Two Plays (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1939). They are a rewriting of "Three Songs to the Same Tune" (1934), which Yeats had written as marching songs at a time of political street movements in Ireland; the later version is more doubtful and more open to other voices.
The names in the first song are those of Irish leaders who failed or fell: O'Donnell and the two O'Neills are usually taken as the Gaelic chiefs of the wars around 1600, Emmet as Robert Emmet, executed after the rising of 1803, and Parnell as Charles Stewart Parnell, the fallen leader of Yeats's youth.
Form
Three songs of thirty lines each. Every song has three six-line stanzas of long, loose, strongly stressed lines closing on a short couplet in full or half rhyme, and each stanza is followed by a four-line refrain that returns almost unchanged. The heavy beat and the repeated choruses are built for marching feet and group singing.