Veronica's Napkin
Veronica's Napkin - meaning Summary
Transcendence Reduced to Smallness
Yeats juxtaposes vast, sacred imagery — a "Heavenly Circuit," Eden's tent-pole, and angelic hierarchy — with a stark, intimate counterimage: a pattern on a napkin dipped in blood. The poem compresses cosmic magnitude into a tiny, violent human trace, suggesting how transcendent meanings can be reframed, disputed, or reduced by ordinary acts. It invites readers to consider conflicting interpretations of holiness and the fragile scale on which they are realized.
Read Complete AnalysesThe Heavenly Circuit; Berenice's Hair; Tent-pole of Eden; the tent's drapery; Symbolical glory of thc earth and air! The Father and His angelic hierarchy That made the magnitude and glory there Stood in the circuit of a needle's eye. Some found a different pole, and where it stood A pattern on a napkin dipped in blood.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.