"For Anne Gregory" [by William Butler Yeats]

For Anne Gregory

'Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'

'But I can get a hair-dye
And set such colour there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair.'

'I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'

-- William Butler Yeats

Comments

[xafire]

Men never loved women without her beauty.

[Jim]

That is not the moral of the poem. It's that we love each other for those things we find attractive in other people. Sometimes it's yellow hair, sometimes a sense of humor, but without it love is not possible. Thus the idea that you can be unlovable and still be loved is impossible. It is futile to want such a thing-- to make oneself ugly or radically different and expect the feelings of love to remain unchanged.

Either that, or Yeats believed no man every loved a brunette.

[Rae]

I think it is that men will never unconditionally love a woman (save a daughter) - the physical attractiveness, attraction, SEX, always is a factor.

[Mary]

I've seen lost very homely women who are happily married. The only answer is it must be love.

[Everald Garner]

This is not American. Yeats was Irish, always and forever.

[The Best American Poetry]

True. Our site is devoted not narrowly to American poetry but to great poetry wherever it comes from, and Yeats was "the king of the cats." -- DL