William Butler Yeats

A Meditation in Time of War

A Meditation in Time of War - meaning Summary

Life Felt in a Moment

The poem captures a sudden, concentrated moment of spiritual perception. Sitting on an old stone beneath a wind-broken tree, the speaker experiences a single, intense sensation that reveals a living unity ('One') beneath ordinary human life, which now seems like an 'inanimate phantasy.' The brief vision contrasts transient, lifeless social existence with an immediate sense of an underlying, animate reality.

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For one throb of the artery, While on that old grey stone I Sat Under the old wind-broken tree, I knew that One is animate, Mankind inanimate phantasy.

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