A Woman Homer Sung
A Woman Homer Sung - context Summary
Published in 1919
Written for The Wild Swans at Coole (published 1919), this short lyric records Yeats’s movement from youthful jealousy to a calmer, elegiac memory. The speaker recalls furious possessiveness in youth, later transforming that feeling into artful remembrance that preserves the woman as an almost Homeric, heroic figure. The poem gestures toward Yeats’s long attachment to Maud Gonne and to the poet’s effort to transmute personal passion into enduring literary image.
Read Complete AnalysesIf any man drew near When I was young, I thought, 'He holds her dear,' And shook with hate and fear. But O! 'twas bitter wrong If he could pass her by With an indifferent eye. Whereon I wrote and wrought, And now, being grey, I dream that I have brought To such a pitch my thought That coming time can say, 'He shadowed in a glass What thing her body was.' For she had fiery blood When I was young, And trod so sweetly proud As 'twere upon a cloud, A woman Homer sung, That life and letters seem But an heroic dream.
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