Mad as the Mist and Snow
Mad as the Mist and Snow - meaning Summary
Madness Like Mist and Snow
The poem presents a speaker who, with an old friend, shelters from foul winds and reflects on a shared sense that the world outside is fallibly mad. Classical authorities appear—Horace, Homer, Plato, Cicero—suggesting that intellectual greatness does not exempt one from this madness. The speaker recalls youthful ignorance and concludes that chaos and irrationality are recurring, pervasive conditions, a theme Yeats revisits in his work.
Read Complete AnalysesBolt and bar the shutter, For the foul winds blow: Our minds are at their best this night, And I seem to know That everything outside us is Mad as the mist and snow. Horace there by Homer stands, Plato stands below, And here is Tully's open page. How many years ago Were you and I unlettered lads Mad as the mist and snow? You ask what makes me sigh, old friend, What makes me shudder so? I shudder and I sigh to think That even Cicero And many-minded Homer were Mad as the mist and snow.
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