Tom the Lunatic
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: Sang old Tom the lunatic
In brief
SummaryMad old Tom's faith: every living thing stands whole in God's eye.
Old Tom, a madman who sleeps in the open air, sings of a change that has troubled his mind and dimmed his once keen sight. Nature's pure, steady light seems to have turned to a smoking wick. He names rogues and beggars he knows, still drinking, wenching or singing penance on the road, and says something has made him see them wrapped in a shroud. Then, in the last stanza, he finds his faith: whatever lives, bird, beast, fish or man, stands in God's unchanging eye in the full vigour of its blood. In that faith he will live or die.
Lines to remember
Stands in God's unchanging eye
Line by line
Lines 1 to 6The smoking wick
Tom, who sleeps under the sky, asks what change has led his thoughts astray and weakened eyes that once saw so keenly. Nature's pure, unchanging light has become a smoking candle wick. It is the lament of someone who feels the world growing dim, perhaps with age.
Lines 7 to 12Seen in a shroud
He lists the company of the road: Huddon, Duddon, Daniel O'Leary and Holy Joe the beggar. They are still drinking and wenching, or singing penance as they go. But something has wearied his eyes, so that he saw them in a shroud, already dead.
Lines 13 to 18God's unchanging eye
The answer comes as a creed. Everything in field or flood, bird, beast, fish or man, mare or stallion, cock or hen, stands in God's unchanging eye with all the vigour of its blood. What seems to fade and die is held whole and alive in eternity.
Themes
Time and eternity
To Tom's failing eyes, things decay: the light smokes, his friends appear shrouded. But the last stanza sets against this a view from eternity, where nothing is lost and every creature keeps "the vigour of its blood". The change is in the seer, not in what is seen.
The body blessed
Tom's faith is earthy and generous. It names stallions and hens, drinking and wenching, and puts them all in God's sight without judgement. Unlike a conventional creed, his holds that physical life, in all its vigour, is itself eternal and holy in God's sight.
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). It is followed by "Tom at Cruachan" and "Old Tom Again". Like Crazy Jane, Tom is an outcast whose madness lets him speak truths about body and spirit. The odd names in the second stanza sound like figures from folk rhyme.
Form
Three six-line stanzas of four-beat lines, the whole spoken as Tom's song in quotation marks. The rhymes are loose and scattered, often linking the first and fifth lines and the fourth and sixth ("road" and "shroud"). The catalogues of names and creatures give the song the rough plenty of a folk ballad.