Church and State
Church and State - meaning Summary
Power and Poetic Purpose
Yeats presents a tension between optimistic poetic consolation and a darker realism. The speaker first imagines a dignified subject: the power of Church and State and the poet’s sustaining pleasures. He then rejects that easy consolation as cowardly, proposing that Church and State may themselves be the oppressive mob. The closing images invert earlier hope—"wine" and "bread" turn unwholesome—signaling disillusionment and a refusal of naive comfort.
Read Complete AnalysesHere is fresh matter, poet, Matter for old age meet; Might of the Church and the State, Their mobs put under their feet. O but heart's wine shall run pure, Mind's bread grow sweet. That were a cowardly song, Wander in dreams no more; What if the Church and the State Are the mob that howls at the door! Wine shall run thick to the end, Bread taste sour.
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