Tom O'Roughley

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1919from The Wild Swans at Coole16 lines

“Though logic choppers rule the town,And every man and maid and boyHas marked a distant object down,An aimless joy is a pure joy,”Or so did Tom O’Roughley sayThat saw the surges running by,“And wisdom is a butterflyAnd not a gloomy bird of prey.

“If little planned is little sinnedBut little need the grave distress.What’s dying but a second wind?How but in zig-zag wantonnessCould trumpeter Michael be so brave?”Or something of that sort he said,“And if my dearest friend were deadI’d dance a measure on his grave.”

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

In brief

Summary

A carefree wise fool praises aimless joy over planning and logic.

Tom O'Roughley, watching the waves run by, sets himself against a world of "logic choppers" where everyone has fixed on some distant goal. To him "An aimless joy is a pure joy", and wisdom is a butterfly, not a gloomy bird of prey. In the second stanza he goes further: if you plan little you sin little and need not fear the grave, and dying is only "a second wind". The poem ends on a shocking cheerfulness: if his dearest friend were dead, he would dance on his grave.

Lines to remember

An aimless joy is a pure joy,

And wisdom is a butterfly

What's dying but a second wind?

Line by line

Lines 1 to 8Aimless joy
Tom's creed comes in quotation marks, with the narrator's shrug "Or so did Tom O'Roughley say" in between. Against a town ruled by logic and people who have "marked a distant object down", he offers two images of wisdom: the light, zig-zagging butterfly and, rejected, "a gloomy bird of prey".
Lines 9 to 16Dancing on the grave
The second stanza turns to death, and "What's dying but a second wind?" treats it as fresh breath, not an end. Even the archangel Michael, trumpeter of the Last Judgement, is brave only through "zig-zag wantonness". Then comes the startling close: he would "dance a measure" on his dearest friend's grave.

Themes

Wisdom and folly

Tom is a wise fool, the kind of figure who speaks truth by breaking the rules of good sense. He mocks the "logic choppers" and the planners, and prefers a wisdom that flits like "a butterfly". The narrator's offhand "Or something of that sort he said" keeps the wisdom loose and unofficial, as Tom would want.

Joy and death

For Tom, joy is purest when it has no aim, and death is nothing to fear: "What's dying but a second wind?" The final boast that he would dance on his dearest friend's grave sounds heartless, but in context it is celebration, not contempt: grief itself becomes a dance.

Context

The poem was added to The Wild Swans at Coole in the enlarged Macmillan edition of 1919. Tom O'Roughley seems to be an imagined country sage rather than a real man, one of the fools and wandering wise men who run through Yeats's work, from the early ballads to the later Tom the Lunatic. His praise of "aimless joy" and his distrust of logic fit a book that often sets instinct and passion against learning.

Form

Two eight-line stanzas of four-beat lines, each rhyming ABABCDDC ("town", "boy", "down", "joy"; "say", "by", "butterfly", "prey"). The quick, regular beat and the tight rhymes give Tom's sayings the ring of proverbs, while the narrator's interruptions keep them casual.