The Unappeasable Host
The Unappeasable Host - meaning Summary
Grief, Exile, and Longing
The poem contrasts an enchanted, privileged childhood with the speaker's bitter grief and displacement. Mythic Danaan children are carefree while the narrator laments a lost or threatened child and hears graves calling. Recurrent desolate winds sweep between sea, West, Heaven and Hell, amplifying cosmic exile and mourning. The phrase "unappeasable host" names an inner, relentless sorrow that the speaker finds more compelling than conventional piety or consolation.
Read Complete AnalysesThe Danaan children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold, And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes, For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies, With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold: I kiss my wailing child and press it to my breast, And hear the narrow graves calling my child and me. Desolate winds that cry over the wandering sea; Desolate winds that hover in the flaming West; Desolate winds that beat the doors of Heaven, and beat The doors of Hell and blow there many a whimpering ghost; O heart the winds have shaken, the unappeasable host Is comelier than candles at Mother Mary's feet.
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