Happiness in a Blue Stone: William Butler Yeats

On the eve of World War II, during a time when life was uncertain and the English tendency was toward depressing modernity, William Butler Yeats remarks in his “Lapis Lazuli” of “hysterical women [who] say / They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow, / Of poets that are always gay” (lines 1-3). In these cynical times, modern folk had grown apparently tired of constant gaiety, and they felt the poets and artists to be the ones who most espoused this hated trait. According to the popular mentality, “everybody knows or else should know / That if nothing drastic is done,” terrible things will happen (lines 4-5). Of course, in the midst of this atmosphere, where everyday people are faced with the threat of “Aeroplane and Zeppelin” (line 6) and “King Billy bomb-balls” falling from the sky and flattening towns and people (line 7), it is understandable why poetic gaiety—seen as frivolous, even indecent—might be frowned upon.

However, Yeats argues, the poetic cannot help it. Even those who “perform their tragic play” (line 9), like the characters in famed tragedies as Hamlet and King Lear, cannot truly feel tragic because of the very nature of art itself. If these actors are “worthy [of] their prominent part in the play, / [they] Do not break up their lines to weep” (lines 14-15). Indeed, even “Hamlet and Lear are gay” (line 16), refusing to succumb to the tragedies that they represent. Something about art itself, then, leads to gaiety; the fact that these men play those whom they are not, walking about a curtained stage and learning a part, wearing fancy dress and stage makeup, renders them incapable of true tragedy. And even “[t]hough Hamlet rambles and Lear rages” (line 21), neither feels the imminent war, the shortage of food and supplies, or the prevailing cynical mindset, so each is gay.

Portentous of the war—perhaps with World War I in his mind—Yeats assures his readership that “All things fall and are built again,” over and over throughout history (line 35). Great civilizations, small civilizations, ancient cities and modern ones, have all been felled and rebuilt. Once rebuilt, as would be the case with the War that would start within just a few years, they are destined to someday fall again and be rebuilt again. However, Yeats joyfully acknowledges that, universally, “those that build them again are gay,” not somber, in doing so (line 36). The “hysterical women” of line 1 who condemn gaiety simply do not consider its repercussions: without the relentless gaiety of the 1920s, for example, the American and English societies would still be in ruins. Yeats puts it upon himself, the poet, to remain gay even in the face of war, death, and hysterical women.

Yeats recounts a beautiful artistic piece that he has been given, depicting “Two Chinamen, behind them a third / . . . carved in Lapis Lazuli, / Over them flies a long-legged bird / A symbol of longevity” (lines 37-40). This lovely craft-piece is, ultimately, pointless: it will not feed or clothe anyone, and is merely to look at and enjoy. Those cynics who denounce gaiety would likely disapprove of its very existence, let alone a poet’s glorification of it. And so Yeats describes it in great detail, saying how to him “Every discolouration of the stone, / Every accidental crack or dent / Seems a water-course or an avalanche” (lines 43-45). He studies this stone and projects meaning into even its cracks and faults. Yeats imagines further meaning into the men it depicts, “[delighting] to imagine them seated” at a small temple (line 50), worshiping, as “One asks for mournful melodies; / Accomplished fingers begin to play” for the men, enrapturing them (53-54). These melodies, like the performances of Hamlet and Lear, are “mournful” in nature, though players and listeners alike derive joy from them. Of the Chinamen on the stone, “Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, / Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay” (lines 55-56). These men, literally as ancient as the stone itself, know enough to be gay in spite of their long journey and all their hardships. Yeats ends with this implicit lesson to the “hysterical women”: gaiety is not a measure of idiocy or naïveté, but rather of wisdom and art.