Never Give All the Heart
Never Give All the Heart - context Summary
Published in 1913
Written for The Green Helmet and Other Poems (published 1913), this short lyric presents a caution about romantic surrender. The speaker advises against giving one’s whole heart because certainty can lessen desire and lovers may treat affection as a performance. The poem frames love as transient delight and uses a personal closing image of someone who "gave all his heart and lost," suggesting Yeats’s own experience informs the warning.
Read Complete AnalysesNever give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy. Kind delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.
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