An Acre of Grass
An Acre of Grass - meaning Summary
Old Age, Creative Defiance
Yeats’s poem contrasts physical decline and domestic quiet with a fierce wish to reclaim visionary creative power in old age. The speaker accepts diminished bodily strength but pleads for an "old man's frenzy" to remake himself into prophetic figures like Timon, Lear, Blake or Michelangelo. He yearns for a piercing, eagle-like mind that can compel truth and rouse the dead, even if such genius leaves him forgotten by mankind.
Read Complete AnalysesPicture and book remain, An acre of green grass For air and exercise, Now strength of body goes; Midnight, an old house Where nothing stirs but a mouse. My temptation is quiet. Here at life's end Neither loose imagination, Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known. Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call; A mind Michael Angelo knew That can pierce the clouds, Or inspired by frenzy Shake the dead in their shrouds; Forgotten else by mankind, An old man's eagle mind.
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