Littérature anglophone| “Never Give all the Heart” by W.B Yeats (1865-1939)
Irish Literature | Analysis of the poem by Yeats.
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The poem
Never give all the Heart
By William Butler Yeats
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.
Introduction
Throughout the poem, Yeats’s message is clear: don’t give your whole heart to someone. The poem can be read as a warning to never love someone wholeheartedly. Literally, the poem deals with a man blinded by love who has given all his heart to a woman who broke it.
Yeats’s own personal life is clearly the inspiration for these lines. At the time that Yeats published his poems, Maud Gonne was the major focus of his life. He was deeply in love with her and proposed to her four times. She rejected him all four times and married someone else. It can easily be thought that this poem might have sprung from that terrible heartbreak that left him with a cracked and bruised heart forever.
Yeats’s own personal life is clearly the inspiration for these lines. At the time that Yeats published his poems, Maud Gonne was the major focus of his life. He was deeply in love with her and proposed to her four times. She rejected him all four times and married someone else. It can easily be thought that this poem might have sprung from that terrible heartbreak that left him with a cracked and bruised heart forever.
Analysis
The speaker wants to let the reader know that women are definitely not always what they seem. In the opening lines of the poem, “Never give all the heart, for love / Will hardly seem worth thinking of”, the speaker continues to give out his warning: when somebody gives all their heart for love, they do not even think about it. In other words, love makes people blind. Moreover, the speaker implies that giving your heart for love will make you vulnerable.
The poem is written in a Sonnet form. The Sonnet form measures 14 lines and is most of the time a poem about love. However, it would be more appropriate to call this poem ‘a frustrated love sonnet’
The poem is written in a Sonnet form. The Sonnet form measures 14 lines and is most of the time a poem about love. However, it would be more appropriate to call this poem ‘a frustrated love sonnet’
The use of a caesura /siˈzjʊərə/ after ‘Never give all the heart’, enacts a pause, emphasizing the line to call the reader’s attention. Following the caesura comes the second topic of the poem: ‘for love’. Indeed, this Sonnet can be seen as a tribute to heartbreaks, with the Irish poet writing this piece in reflection of his unfortunate love experience with Maud Gonne.
In the following lines ‘,To passionate women if it seem / Certain (…)’ (lines 3-7), the speaker portrays women as deceitful. In other words, appearances are not always what they seem and can be really deceiving. The speaker implies that the woman he fell in love with has deceived him into trusting her and believing she was honest and sincere. He thought the woman he loved to be passionate, but that is only how she seemed. The speaker warns the reader that if they give their whole heart, it will be taken for granted, and the receiver of that heart will never see that love ‘fade out from kiss to kiss’. Yeats argues that the real excitement of love comes in the unknown moment. Love should be elusive (= ‘difficulty fine, define or achieve). According to Yeats, the certainty of love and the continual doubt is the core of what he thinks women desire in a relationship. The use of caesura with ‘Certain’ can also be regarded as a break, symbolizing the break between him and his lover – Maude Gonne - to who is this poem is dedicated.
Nonetheless, good moments of their relationships are also emphasized with the use of words such as ‘kiss’ ‘dreamy’, and ‘delight’. Yeats affirms that ‘everything that is lovely’ seems great at first and that we may be blinded by the spell of love. However, in the following line, the speaker restates his warning by saying that the sweet moments are just fleeting moments of happiness which will not last in time: ‘(…) but brief dreamy, kind, delight’. The word ‘dreamy’ is also worth commenting upon as it suggests that the state of being in Love can be a mere illusion that blind us from the truth and destroys our capacity to see things clearly. The message of the poem is thus reiterated: ‘O never give the heart outright. The exclamative “o” furthers the speaker’s sense of desolation. He is racked [dévasté] with pain about the loss of his loved one and this unrequited love. He believes that his love for Maude Gonne was too strong and that this is the reason why she would not love him back – his feelings were too obvious, too ‘Certain ‘, and too permanent
Nonetheless, good moments of their relationships are also emphasized with the use of words such as ‘kiss’ ‘dreamy’, and ‘delight’. Yeats affirms that ‘everything that is lovely’ seems great at first and that we may be blinded by the spell of love. However, in the following line, the speaker restates his warning by saying that the sweet moments are just fleeting moments of happiness which will not last in time: ‘(…) but brief dreamy, kind, delight’. The word ‘dreamy’ is also worth commenting upon as it suggests that the state of being in Love can be a mere illusion that blind us from the truth and destroys our capacity to see things clearly. The message of the poem is thus reiterated: ‘O never give the heart outright. The exclamative “o” furthers the speaker’s sense of desolation. He is racked [dévasté] with pain about the loss of his loved one and this unrequited love. He believes that his love for Maude Gonne was too strong and that this is the reason why she would not love him back – his feelings were too obvious, too ‘Certain ‘, and too permanent
In the following lines: ‘For they, for all smooth lips can say / have given their hearts up to the play’, love is described as a game to ‘play’ with women’. With the use of the synecdoche ‘smooth lips’, Yeats suggests that women are merely playing at Love, never fully committing themselves and instead enjoying the game. The speakers suggest that if one gives the heart to a woman he loves, he is simply giving it away to the game of love. In the speaker’s case, he obviously lost the game.
The last lines of the poem are pretty clear: the speaker – once again – offers the would-be lover some advice: don’t dive headlong into love, for your beloved will not thank you for it or reciprocate it.
The last lines of the poem are pretty clear: the speaker – once again – offers the would-be lover some advice: don’t dive headlong into love, for your beloved will not thank you for it or reciprocate it.
Conclusion
In “Never Give all the Heart”, the speaker urges the reader not to surrender his ‘heart’ entirely to a woman. The poet knows for sure that what is beautiful in love is but ‘a brief, dreaming, kind delight’. These women have given their hearts to the game of life rather than love. The man who wrote these lines knows the price of surrender: ‘for he gave all his heart and lost’.
This poem reflects the loss felt by Yeats at the news of Maud Gonne’s marriage. This is a poem written from the point of view of a heartbroken man – Yeats was completely wretched due to his traumatic experience of unrequited love. It would be fair to say that the tone he employs is truly biased and influenced by his bitter experience of love.