preview

Analysis Of Never Give All The Heart

Decent Essays

William Butler Yeats’ “Never Give All The Heart” is about vulnerability, love, and blame. It warns of both the fickleness of women and that if one loves in an overbearing manner it will actually be detrimental. Yeats’ personal inspiration for the poem was likely Maud Gonne, a woman whom he proposed to four times, who rejected him all four times and then proceeded to marry someone else. The poem begins in a manner suggestive of a lover scorned. Yeats talks about how passionate women, which at this point in time is not necessarily a compliment, don’t consider love that is a sure thing worth their time and energy. Essentially it is a poetized version of the “Nice guys finish last” argument, along with the idea that people only desire what …show more content…

Yeats also uses the word dumb, which in context likely means unable to speak, but also carries a connotation of being incapable of intelligent thought. Entering a heart into the game of love will damage the heart’s owner on multiple levels. Yeats then references himself, as he who has already given his heart up to the game and lost miserably. He knows the pain and the loss that giving up one’s heart to someone who does not want the whole heart brings. In fact, he was later quoted as saying, “[about his first marriage proposal] that was when the troubling in my life began.” He gave his whole heart to this woman and she didn’t want it. Now, to his credit, Yeats isn’t saying giving any heart is terrible. He is simply stating that giving the entirety of one’s heart is more likely to come off as overeager and overbearing than romantic. Towards the end of the poem, he isn’t blaming the woman as much, he is accepting the gamble that love is.

The structure of this poem is rather notable. It mimics the structure of a Clare sonnet, fourteen lines, iambic pentameter, AABBCCDDEEFFGG rhyme scheme. Both Italian and Shakespearean sonnets tended to be love poems. However, the Clare sonnet doesn’t quite fit properly with either, it’s a touch more simplistic in nature, which lends this poem something akin to irony. This poem isn’t simply a love poem, it’s poem about the frustration of love along with being a cautionary tale. It has a more

Get Access