As
the title of the poem suggests, the advice W. B. Yeats is giving out to someone already in a
relationship or to would-be lover in "Never Give All the Heart" is to hold back in
love. Written as a sonnet (a poem in 14 lines), the poem follows a rhyme scheme somewhat
diverging from the Shakespearean form (A-A, B-B, C-C, D-D, E-E, A-A, and F-F, where a normal
Shakespearean sonnet follows a pattern of A-B-A-B, C-D-C-D, E-F-E-F, and G-G).
The choice of form is apt, since a sonnet is often constructed as a poem of love
addressed to a muse or beloved. The poems tone is borrowed from the courtly English sonnet of
Wyatt, with the speaker often treating love as a game or a hunt. While in its original Italian
form, the sonnet largely dwelt on an idealistic love away from the trappings of lust, in its
English version the sonnet can sometimes be more carnal and cynical. Likewise, the poets initial
tone here is skeptical of love in general and women in particular. Instead of love as a deep,
fulfilling emotion, he positions it more as a contest, where the lover should fight to retain
the upper hand:
Never give all the heart, for
love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it
seem
Certain. (lines 1€“4)
In these lines, the
poet is stating that passionate or virile and beautiful women will tire of love when they can
take it for granted. What keeps them hooked instead is the thrill of uncertainty and the drama
of the chase. Therefore, the lover must act aloof and unpredictable around them. Furthermore,
everlasting love may also induce boredom in women, because everything that is delightful on this
earth is fleeting and momentary. If the lover shows constant, unrelenting passion, the beloved
will only find it tiresome:
For everything thats lovely
is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. (lines 6€“7)
Whats more, if love is a game, the lover or the player must be at his sharpest while
playing it in order to win. However, absolute, consuming love doesnt make you sharp, the poet
contends. Love blinds youmakes you sappy and weaktherefore making you a terrible player. Being
completely in love thus is actually antithetical to the game of love. Thus the poet
distinguishes between Love with a capital "L" and love as a game of courtship and
lust:
And who could play it well enough
If deaf
and dumb and blind with love? (lines 11€“12)
But the last
few lines of the poem somehow mitigate the bitterness. At first the poem seems like calculating,
cynical advice from a man practiced at seduction; however, the lastshows the poem to be what is
really is: a lovers lament. This change in tone, or reversal, is also well in keeping with the
conventions of the sonnet form in English, where a volta or a twirl often occurs before the
final couplet.
Ironically, the volta reveals, the poet has not followed his
own advice. Instead, he has gambled away everything in love, given all his heart and lost, which
is why he has composed this warning note for future lovers. The poet is also rejecting the
common belief that It is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.
Sometimes it is better not to have loved, he says, especially when the wages of love are
self-annihilation:
He that made this knows all the
cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost. (lines 13€“14)
Yet theis that the poet did gain something very worthwhile from his consuming passion:
this beautiful poem. He has memorialized his love forever in art, which brings us to a famous
statement made by Yeats's real-life muse, the one to whom he gave all his heart and lost:
"The world should thank me for not marrying you. Had Yeats gone on to marry her, she seems
to be asking, how would he have created perfect poems filled with longing?
The "she" in question is Maud Gonne, a famous, charismatic actress and
activist of her day and Yeats's longtime muse. Although it is not necessary to use a writers
biography to explain a text, exception can be made in the case of Yeats, especially when it
comes to his love poems. Yeats himself alluded to or addressed Gonne in several of his poems. He
remained madly in love with her much of his adult life, proposing marriage to her more than a
few times, an offer she always spurned. Though Gonne was a great friend of Yeatss, she accepted
him as a romantic partner only very briefly.
Never Give All the Heart can
be read in the context of Yeatss unrequited love for Gonne. Inspired by his one-sided passion,
Yeats wrote more such poems about the futility of love, including the marvelously-titled He
Wishes his Beloved were Dead!
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