The Tower - W.B. Yeats
Meditations on Age, Art, and the Search for Identity
I
What shall I do with this absurdity—
O heart, O troubled heart—this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog’s tail?
Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible—
No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben’s back
And had the livelong summer day to spend.
It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,
Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend
Until the hour when the vast stretch of air
Eclipses all but the dark echo of chance,
And I am old and done with every sort
Of specious splendor and imaginative wile.
Odor of blood when Christ was crucified,
The world’s unwitting praise or its dispraise,
Are but the tongue’s braggart talk, or the false blood
That rose from street to street in carious days
To widen and to deepen the loud stream;
Yet there’s a score of writers that must be read;
And statesmen that invent new policies;
Nor could I live if the big world were not.
So from the tower I climb—then call the Muse,
Or call Plato to my fancy’s board,
And call those images I long have loved
Upon the mind’s eye: Benedictine birds,
Towers, and holy wreaths, or the frenzied hair
Of spirits overshadowed by the moon;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in marketplaces; and schools, and law,
And parliaments all have but tested, weighed,
And set their stamp approval on the same
But jokes are grown more subtle, and about
The daily pulpits there have spread the lies
From the live limbs of an imperial race.
What matter though numb nightmare ride on top
And blood and mire the sensitive body stain?
What matter? Out of sight, beyond the mind,
I beckon to the summoners of the soul.
Staring upon the fourteen days of frost,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.
II
I mock Plotinus’ thought
And cry in Plato’s teeth,
Death and life were not
Till man made up the whole,
Made lock, stock and barrel
Out of his bitter soul,
Aye, sun and moon and star, all,
And further add to that
That, being dead, we rise,
Dream and so create
Translunar paradise.
I have prepared my peace
With learned Italian things
And the proud stones of Greece,
Poet’s imaginings
And memories of the old tombs
Where men in armor lie.
Nature with equal mind
Sees all her sons at play,
Sees man’s blind power whirl
The rooted trees away,
Drive fragments of the mountain
And flood, frost, fire from shape to shape,
And loosen the whole tie.
Night, emptier grows that bed
And the frozen wind howls on,
I have dried the beds of lakes,
I have brought fair cities down,
Exposed the foul among the fair,
Betrayed the old to the young.
The tower is thrown down.
Death and life were not
Till man made up the whole,
Made lock, stock and barrel
Out of his bitter soul.
III
A bloody and a sudden end,
Gunshot or a noose,
For Death who takes what man would keep,
Leaves what man would lose.
He might have my soul’s desire,
But not my mother’s son;
He might let my blood be tainted,
Survive my hopes undone:
Still I’d up on the tower
To watch the rocky lane
For the foot of my poor dear ghost
Coming back again.
Down by the salley gardens
My love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens
With little snow-white feet.
If I had those feet once more
In a road unknown to fame,
I’d not ask where they tread,
Because they tread in dream;
As close that foot might stray
Beside this crumbling tower,
Those eyes look up and mark
That pensive sentinel flower.
I call that flower Eternity,
Its substance not of clay,
A bloom that catches all
That Time takes far away;
For if I but recall
The drop that night must spare
In veins of some wild lily,
The ghost will find me there.
A bloody and a sudden end,
Gunshot or a noose,
For Death who takes what man would keep,
Leaves what man would lose.
W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Tower” was first published in 1928 and takes its name from Thoor Ballylee, the Norman tower Yeats owned in County Galway. The work is structured in three sections, each delving into aspects of human identity—specifically the tension between the aging self, the role of imagination, and the inevitability of change.
The opening lines address the poet’s struggle with old age. Yeats uses self-deprecating humor and stark imagery to portray decrepitude as a sort of burdensome attachment, likening it to a “dog’s tail.” Yet as he laments lost youth and vitality, he acknowledges that his creative powers—in some sense—are still “excited, passionate, fantastical.” This duality sets up one of the poem’s central themes: the paradox of a mind that remains fervently imaginative, even as the body succumbs to time.
Philosophical references to Plato and Plotinus underscore Yeats’ desire to transcend physical limitations. Classical thought, for Yeats, offers a route to contemplate eternal truths beyond the decay of the material world. Throughout the poem, there are allusions to lofty ideals and the “summoners of the soul,” suggesting that the poet seeks solace or transcendence in an intellectual sphere when confronted by the mortal coil.
In the second section, Yeats questions inherited philosophies and the nature of creation itself. He plays with the idea that reality, or at least how we perceive it, might be forged by human consciousness—“Made lock, stock and barrel / Out of his bitter soul.” Here, Yeats challenges the boundaries between life, death, and art, hinting that our imaginative power shapes our experience of existence.
The final section returns to more personal territory, using the tower as a vantage point from which to face mortality and recall personal ghosts. The repeated lines about “a bloody and a sudden end” highlight the vulnerability of life in the face of death, while the vision of the “salley gardens” and the ephemeral flower called “Eternity” remind us of Yeats’ earlier romantic and Irish folklore influences. The poem shifts from cosmic musings to a deeply personal reflection on love, memory, and the possibility of spiritual endurance.
In essence, “The Tower” navigates the modern poet’s psyche: anxious about the passage of time yet determined to engage with timeless ideals. It merges Yeats’ personal attachments—to Ireland, its myths, and his own youth—with universal concerns about the fleeting nature of human life. The poem’s language oscillates between reflective calm and urgent questioning, mirroring the speaker’s attempt to reconcile the dissonance of body and mind, age and imagination, transience and eternity.
Overall, Yeats’ tower stands for both literal and symbolic structures: a fortress against the erosion of time, but also a vantage for contemplating the invisible realms of art and spirit. The poem endures as a testament to Yeats’ late style, in which he blends rich imagery, philosophical depth, and passionate intensity to address one of poetry’s oldest concerns—how to outlast, or at least understand, the relentless tide of mortality.
Key points
• The poem grapples with the challenge of aging, contrasting a decaying body with a still-vivid imagination.
• Philosophical allusions (Plato, Plotinus) highlight Yeats’ quest for transcendence and eternal forms.
• The tower itself symbolizes both a personal haven and a metaphorical vantage point for spiritual insight.
• Yeats juxtaposes universal anxieties—mortality, memory, the legacy of art—with specific Irish mythic and cultural references.
• Ultimately, the work underscores the power of imagination to endure and shape our experience of reality.
