Wisdom
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Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.
In brief
SummaryReligious art dresses up the carpenter's son as the child of kings.
A sly, compressed poem about how Christian art changed the story of Christ. The gospel told of a humble carpenter's son, imagined on a workshop floor by "some peasant gospeller". Painters, sculptors and glass-makers "straightened all that went awry": they placed his Mother on a throne of gold and ivory, dressed in damask, stitching royal purple for him in the starry towers of Babylon. The last lines give him a grand pedigree and the name Wisdom, which "sounded best" because the truth of that "wild infancy" was a thing of horror.
Lines to remember
The true faith discovered was
Miracle had its playtime where
Drove horror from His Mother's breast.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 7Art corrects the gospel
The "true faith", the poem says with a straight face, was only discovered when "painted panel, statuary, / Glass-mosaic, window-glass" put right the plain picture drawn by "some peasant gospeller" of Christ on the floor "Of a working-carpenter". Art, not scripture, made the religion respectable.
Lines 8 to 15The enthroned Mother
"Miracle had its playtime": artists let their fancy run. Mary sits "In damask clothed" on a throne "Chryselephantine, cedar boarded", stitching purple so that her son "might be nobly breeched", in "starry towers of Babylon" too high for Noah's flood. The splendour is deliberately overdone.
Lines 16 to 20Named Wisdom
The pedigree is made grand too: "King Abundance" fathered him on "Innocence", and he is "Wisdom". That name "sounded best", the poem says, considering the "wild infancy" that drove horror from his Mother's breast. Behind the gold and ivory lies a terrifying birth.
Themes
Art and religion
The poem suggests that faith was shaped by its images. The list "painted panel, statuary, / Glass-mosaic, window-glass" is the whole machinery of church art, and it "Straightened all that went awry" in the humble gospel. The tone is ironic, but not simply mocking: Yeats loved Byzantine mosaic and sacred art, and he knows how much it gave.
Humble and grand
Two pictures of Christ's childhood are set against each other: the "working-carpenter" and his floor, and the "damask", "Chryselephantine" throne and "purple hoarded". The move from one to the other is the poem's story. The grand version makes Mary a queen and her child a prince, "nobly breeched".
The terror of the divine
The final lines turn the joke into something darker. The child's infancy is "wild", and his coming drives "horror" from his Mother's breast. As in "The Mother of God", the Incarnation is not gentle: a human woman carries something vast and frightening, and the dignified name "Wisdom" hides that fear.
Context
"Wisdom" was collected in The Tower (Macmillan, 1928), where it sits among poems about religious history such as "Two Songs from a Play". Yeats's interest in the gold and mosaic art of Byzantium, which shapes "Sailing to Byzantium" in the same book, shows in the list of "Glass-mosaic" and gold-and-ivory thrones. The poem's idea that Christ's birth was a moment of terror returns in "The Mother of God".
Form
Twenty short four-beat lines printed as one block, rhyming in alternate pairs (abab) throughout. Many rhymes are slant ("was" and "glass", "seat" and "sat"), and the syntax is twisted and packed ("The true faith discovered was"), so the poem reads like a riddle that has to be untangled.
