PROCESSIONS that lack high stilts have nothing that
catches the eye.
What if my great-granddad had a pair that were
twenty foot high,
And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern Stalks
upon higher,
Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence
or a fire.
Because piebald ponies, led bears, caged lions, ake
but poor shows,
Because children demand Daddy-long-legs upon This
timber toes,
Because women in the upper storeys demand a face at
the pane,
That patching old heels they may shriek, I take to
chisel and plane.
Malachi Stilt-Jack am I, whatever I learned has run wild,
From collar to collar, from stilt to stilt, from father to child.
All metaphor, Malachi, stilts and all. A barnacle goose
Far up in the stretches of night; night splits and the
dawn breaks loose;
I, through the terrible novelty of light, stalk on, stalk on;
Those great sea-horses bare their teeth and laugh at the dawn.
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Comments
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Why does this poem work so well? Yeats starts by developing a detailed metaphor, then clearly states that it is a metaphor, which would not normally be seen as a successful literary device. Then he's back on his stilts, but he's left the circus procession and the demands of his public behind, and is moving into a strange new light - with mythological sea horses in it. I don't know why this works, but it does.
The stilts are surely Yeats's poetic genius - but he believes there were better poets in the past. Yeats lived at a terrible time, and he looked to a golden age in the past when things were better. We're not used to this point of view - we tend to think that most things are better now than they were. -
Sometimes we want the things that seem to float above us, beyond us, so badly, we would walk on higher ground just to get it. Two things really stuck out to me in this poem...one was the part about his grandfather - if his stills were so much taller than mine...often we are caught in this perpetual race to be bigger, better, greater than our forefathers.
The other was this...women in the upper storeys demand a face at the pane...his concept of woman and their expectations...that these woman, in their lofty towers, expect men to rise up to their level. To be honest, I really like that - I think to often we are scared off by those who we feel "out-class" or "out-rank" us, and rather than rising to meet them, we attempt to pull them down.
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