To a Young Beauty

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1919from The Wild Swans at Coole18 lines

Dear fellow-artist, why so freeWith every sort of company,With every Jack and Jill?Choose your companions from the best;Who draws a bucket with the restSoon topples down the hill.

You may, that mirror for a school,Be passionate, not bountifulAs common beauties may,Who were not born to keep in trimWith old Ezekiel’s cherubimBut those of Beaujolet.

I know what wages beauty gives,How hard a life her servant lives,Yet praise the winters gone;There is not a fool can call me friend,And I may dine at journey’s endWith Landor and with Donne.

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

In brief

Summary

An older poet urges a young woman to choose her company carefully.

The poet speaks to a young woman as a "Dear fellow-artist" and chides her for mixing with "every Jack and Jill". She should choose her companions from the best, because anyone who follows the crowd soon tumbles, like Jack down the hill. A beauty like hers can be passionate but should not give herself away cheaply, as common beauties do. He ends by speaking of his own choice: beauty's service is hard and poorly paid, but no fool can call him friend, and at the end of his journey he may dine with the poets Landor and Donne.

Lines to remember

Choose your companions from the best;

There is not a fool can call me friend,

With Landor and with Donne.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 6Every Jack and Jill
He asks why she is "so free" with every sort of company. The nursery rhyme turns into a warning: "Who draws a bucket with the rest / Soon topples down the hill." The joke is gentle, but the advice is firm: "Choose your companions from the best".
Lines 7 to 12Two kinds of cherub
She is "that mirror for a school", a model others copy, and may be "passionate, not bountiful". Common beauties are made to match the pretty cherubs of "Beaujolet"; she belongs with "old Ezekiel's cherubim", the awesome angels of the Bible.
Lines 13 to 18Dinner with the poets
He knows "what wages beauty gives" and how hard her servant's life is, yet he praises "the winters gone". His reward is pride: "There is not a fool can call me friend", and he hopes to dine at "journey's end" with Landor and Donne.

Themes

Choosing company

The whole poem is about the company one keeps. The young woman spends herself on "every Jack and Jill"; the poet has kept himself apart so that "There is not a fool can call me friend". His idea of good company is the great dead, Landor and Donne, and he offers her the same high standard.

Beauty's service

Beauty here is a demanding employer. He knows "what wages beauty gives" and "How hard a life her servant lives", and he means both her beauty and his art. The contrast between "Ezekiel's cherubim" and the cherubs of "Beaujolet" is a contrast between beauty that is fierce and sacred and beauty that is merely pretty.

Context

The poem first appeared in book form in the enlarged Macmillan edition of The Wild Swans at Coole in 1919. It is usually read as addressed to Iseult Gonne, Maud Gonne's daughter, whom Yeats had known since her childhood. In 1917 he proposed to her and was refused, and in 1920 she married the novelist Francis Stuart.

Walter Savage Landor and John Donne are English poets of earlier centuries. Imagining a dinner with them at "journey's end" is Yeats's way of saying that the only judges he cares about are the great poets of the past, and that a hard, choosy life is worth it if it earns him a seat at their table.

Form

Three six-line stanzas rhyming AABCCB, with two four-beat lines followed by a shorter three-beat line in each half. The short lines ("With every Jack and Jill", "With Landor and with Donne") snap each half shut, giving the advice a brisk, epigrammatic edge.