What was Lost
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1938. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2034, 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 2034.
It begins: I sing what was lost and dread what was won
In brief
SummaryA singer loyal to a lost king and a lost cause.
A five-line song of loyalty to a cause already lost. The singer celebrates what was lost and fears what was won. He walks through a battle being fought over again, following a king who is lost and leading soldiers who are lost too. The last two lines widen the view: feet may run towards the rising or the setting sun, towards hope or decline, yet they always strike the same small stone.
Lines to remember
I sing what was lost and dread what was won,
Line by line
Lines 1 to 3Lost king, lost men
The singer takes the side of the losers: he sings what was lost and dreads what was won. The old battle is being fought again, and he walks in it under a lost king with lost soldiers as his men.
Lines 4 to 5The same small stone
Whether feet run towards the Rising or the Setting, dawn or dusk, beginning or end, they always beat on the same small stone. History seems to move, but it returns to one spot. The capitals suggest sun and history on a grand scale.
Themes
Lost causes
The poem sides with defeat. The singer honours what was lost and distrusts the victors. His loyalty to a lost king is pointless in practical terms, and that is its nobility. Yeats in his last years often cast himself as the last of an old order.
Repetition in history
The battle is being fought a second time, and all running, whichever way it goes, ends on the same stone. History, in this view, does not progress but repeats itself. The idea echoes Yeats's lifelong belief in historical cycles, here pressed into a few lines.
Context
First published in New Poems (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1938). The poem names no particular king or war, and it can be read as a song for any defeated cause, from the Jacobite and Gaelic lost causes of Irish song to the fading world of Yeats's own class and ideals.
Form
Five long lines of four strong beats with a rocking, galloping rhythm. The first, fourth and fifth lines rhyme loosely, the second and third fully. The heavy repetition of one word gives the song the sound of a lament or marching chant.