William Butler Yeats

The Withering of the Boughs

The Withering of the Boughs - meaning Summary

Loss Through Confessional Speech

The poem presents a speaker whose lonely yearning and admission of private dreams seem to cause a symbolic decay: boughs wither not from winter but because he has told them his dreams. Mythic Irish imagery—witches, the Danaan folk, swans, Echtge—frames the speaker’s knowledge of otherworldly places. Refrain and mournful tone link disclosure, longing, and loss, suggesting that speaking inner visions alters the world and diminishes the self.

Read Complete Analyses

I cried when the moon was mutmuring to the birds: 'Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will, I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words, For the roads are unending, and there is no place to my mind.' The honey-pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill, And I fell asleep upon lonely Echtge of streams. No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind; The boughs have withered because I have told them my, dreams. I know of the leafy paths that the witches take Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool, And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake; I know where a dim moon drifts, where the Danaan kind Wind and unwind their dances when the light grows cool On the island lawns, their feet where the pale foam gleams. No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind; The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams. I know of the sleepy country, where swans fly round Coupled with golden chains, and sing as they fly. A king and a queen are wandering there, and the sound Has made them so happy and hopeless, so deaf and so blind With wisdom, they wander till all the years have gone by; I know, and the curlew and peewit on Echtge of streams. No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind; The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

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