The Scholars
The Scholars - meaning Summary
Passion versus pedantry
Yeats contrasts the tidy respectability of aging scholars with the unruly passion that created the poems they now edit. The “bald heads” cough in ink, pace carpets, and keep safe company, while the young men who wrote the lines did so in sleepless desire to please “beauty’s ignorant ear.” The closing question—invoking Catullus—presses the irony: would the great erotic poet have written anything if he had lived as cautiously as these editors? The poem favors lived feeling over pedantry.
Read Complete AnalysesBald heads forgetful of their sins, Old, learned, respectable bald heads Edit and annotate the lines That young men, tossing on their beds, Rhymed out in love's despair To flatter beauty's ignorant ear. They'll cough in the ink to the world's end; Wear out the carpet with their shoes Earning respect; have no strange friend; If they have sinned nobody knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?
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