What Magic Drum?
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1934. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2030, 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 2030.
It begins: He holds him from desire, all but stops his breathing lest
In brief
SummaryA tender, strange vision of a god as both father and mother.
Six long lines in two halves. First a male figure holds himself back from desire, almost stopping his breath, so that the primordial motherhood in his limbs does not leave him and the child resting on his breast can go on drinking joy like milk. Then the poem turns into questions: what magic drum sounds through the dark garden foliage, what came from the forest, what beast has licked its young? His mouth moves over limb, breast and belly, and the tenderness becomes animal and mysterious.
Lines to remember
What from the forest came? What beast has licked its young?
Line by line
Lines 1 to 3Holding back desire
He holds himself from desire and scarcely breathes, afraid that the "Primordial Motherhood" in him will leave his limbs and the child will no longer rest there, drinking joy from his breast as if it were milk.
Lines 4 to 6What beast
Through foliage so thick it blots out the light, a magic drum sounds. His mouth and tongue move down limb and breast. The poem ends in wondering questions: what has come out of the forest, what beast has licked its young?
Themes
Divine parenthood
The figure is male but mothers the child, with joy flowing like milk. Coming in the Supernatural Songs after Ribh's attack on an all-male Trinity, it seems to imagine a god who holds both father and mother within him, and whose love is bodily and nurturing rather than abstract.
Animal tenderness
The second half moves into the forest: a drum, a beast licking its young. The love that seemed spiritual is also instinctive and physical, as old as animal life. The questions are never answered, which leaves the scene sacred and a little frightening.
Context
The poem is the seventh of the Supernatural Songs, which first appeared in a book in The King of the Great Clock Tower, Commentaries and Poems (Cuala Press, 1934), and were collected in A Full Moon in March (Macmillan, 1935). Its meaning is much debated; many readers link it to Yeats's interest at this time in Indian religious thought, where the divine is often both male and female.
Form
Two three-line stanzas of very long, loosely stressed lines, each stanza on one rhyme or near rhyme ("lest", "rest", "breast"; "drum", "tongue", "young"). The first stanza is one held breath of a sentence; the second breaks into questions, like drumbeats in the dark.