A Last Confession
A Last Confession - meaning Summary
Bodily and Soulful Love
Yeats contrasts physical sex and spiritual union in a candid personal confession. He admits enjoying bodily pleasure with a young man but insists that true intimacy occurs when two souls meet nakedly, beyond mere physical exchange. The poem separates commonplace erotic experience from a rarer, sovereign delight that survives suffering and possesses a private, inviolable quality. It frames love as both bodily act and metaphysical discovery.
Read Complete AnalysesWhat lively lad most pleasured me Of all that with me lay? I answer that I gave my soul And loved in misery, But had great pleasure with a lad That I loved bodily. Flinging from his arms I laughed To think his passion such He fancied that I gave a soul Did but our bodies touch, And laughed upon his breast to think Beast gave beast as much. I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes. But when this soul, its body off, Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows, And give his own and take his own And rule in his own right; And though it loved in misery Close and cling so tight, There's not a bird of day that dare Extinguish that delight.
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