Under Saturn

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1921from Michael Robartes and the Dancer16 lines

Do not because this day I have grown saturnineImagine that lost love, inseparable from my thoughtBecause I have no other youth, can make me pine;For how should I forget the wisdom that you brought,The comfort that you made? Although my wits have goneOn a fantastic ride, my horse’s flanks were spurredBy childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen,And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard,And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he diedBefore my time, seem like a vivid memory.You heard that labouring man who had served my people. He saidUpon the open road, near to the Sligo quay⁠—No, no, not said, but cried it out⁠—“You have come againAnd surely after twenty years it was time to come.”I am thinking of a child’s vow sworn in vainNever to leave that valley his fathers called their home.

November, 1919.

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

In brief

Summary

Yeats assures his wife that his gloom is homesickness for Sligo, not lost love.

The poet speaks to his wife on a day when he has "grown saturnine". She must not think he is pining for "lost love": how could he forget the wisdom and comfort she has brought? His mind has been riding back instead to childhood and his family: "an old cross Pollexfen", a Middleton, a red-haired Yeats who died before he was born. He remembers a labouring man who had worked for his people, who cried out on the road near Sligo quay that it was time he came back after twenty years. The gloom, it turns out, is guilt at a broken childhood vow never to leave "that valley his fathers called their home".

Lines to remember

Do not because this day I have grown saturnine

And surely after twenty years it was time to come.

Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 5Not lost love
"Do not ... Imagine": he heads off a suspicion before she can voice it. His "lost love" is part of his thought because he has "no other youth", but it cannot "make me pine". He owes her too much: "the wisdom that you brought, / The comfort that you made".
Lines 6 to 10Family ghosts
His wits have gone "On a fantastic ride", but the horse was spurred by "childish memories" of his family: a cross old Pollexfen, a Middleton she never heard of, and a red-haired Yeats who died before his time yet "seem like a vivid memory".
Lines 11 to 14The labouring man
She was there when an old workman who had "served my people" met him near "the Sligo quay". The man did not simply say it but "cried it out": "You have come again", and it was time, "after twenty years". The broken, self-correcting syntax catches the emotion of the moment.
Lines 15 to 16The broken vow
The real cause of his mood comes last: a "child's vow sworn in vain / Never to leave that valley". The shift to "his fathers" makes the child a separate person, the boy he was, whose promise the man has broken.

Themes

Marriage

The poem opens as reassurance to a wife. He will not let her think that "lost love" still troubles him; she has brought "wisdom" and "comfort". The poem also shares with her what she cannot know, a name "you never heard", bringing her into his past.

Family and ancestry

His gloom is peopled with ancestors: a "cross Pollexfen", a Middleton, "a red-haired Yeats". Even a man who "had served my people" treats him as belonging to Sligo. Yeats often drew strength from his family line, and here it pulls him home.

Home and exile

The labourer's cry, "You have come again", and the "child's vow sworn in vain" show a man who feels he has abandoned his place. "That valley his fathers called their home" is a lost belonging, and the guilt of leaving it is what has made him "saturnine".

Context

The poem was collected in Michael Robartes and the Dancer, issued by the Cuala Press in February 1921, and is dated November 1919. It is addressed to his wife George, whom Yeats married in October 1917. The "lost love" is usually taken to be Maud Gonne.

The Pollexfens and Middletons were his mother's family, Sligo merchants and shipowners, and Yeats spent much of his childhood with them there. The red-haired Yeats is usually identified as his paternal grandfather, a Church of Ireland clergyman who died before the poet was born.

Form

A single stanza of sixteen long lines, most of six beats, rhymed abab throughout, often with half-rhymes ("gone" and "Pollexfen", "died" and "said", "come" and "home"). The loose, conversational lines, with their interruptions ("No, no, not said, but cried it out"), sound like a man thinking aloud to someone close. The poem is dated "November, 1919".