Are You Content?
Are You Content? - meaning Summary
Uneasy Heir to Lineage
Yeats addresses his forebears and community, asking whether his poems have done justice to an inherited family reputation. He lists ancestors and local figures to evoke a lineage and local landscape, then admits he cannot rely on posterity or spiritual judgment. Despite imagining a restful old age—idling by the sea or playing the elder sage—he confesses a persistent dissatisfaction and creative restlessness.
Read Complete AnalysesI call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent? Eyes spiritualised by death can judge, I cannot, but I am not content. He that in Sligo at Drumcliff Set up the old stone Cross, That red-headed rector in County Down, A good man on a horse, Sandymount Corbets, that notable man Old William pollexfen, The smuggler Middleton, Butlers far back, Half legendary men. Infirm and aged I might stay In some good company, I who have always hated work, Smiling at the sea, Or demonstrate in my own life What Robert Browning meant By an old hunter talking with Gods; But I am not content.
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