“I’d rather be fishing” – a popular bumper sticker that comes to the reader’s mind at the end of Yeats’ The Fisherman. The image he conjures up is that of an idyllic figure he wishes to write a proper poem in honour of. But here is the full poem.
Although I can see him still,
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It’s long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I’d looked in the face
What I had hoped ‘twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.
Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, ‘Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.’
The poem is 40 lines long and is comprised of three sentences. The first stanza contains the first two sentences, which are eight lines long and sixteen lines long respectively; the second stanza is therefore sixteen lines in length. Yeats opens the poem with such detail and the reader is appreciative for it because he can see the imagery, and this is all the more important to know because the poet implies that he is not writing from sight but from memory – ‘Although I can see him still’. He then goes on to describe the imagery for the reader, displaying his sharp recollection of details: ‘The freckled man who goes/To a grey place on a hill/In grey Connemara clothes . . .’ (Connemara is an area in County Galway). Here we have the person, place and dress all given to the reader. It is detailed enough without being too much so. It also fits in with the idyllic imagery that one would call up of the Irish countryside and one of its inhabitants. Following this detail, we then are given the time of day and the purpose for his being where he is: ‘At dawn to cast his flies . . .’ That one line contains so much information for the reader. We are reminded again that what is being described is from the poet’s memory: ‘It’s long since I began/To call up to the eyes . . .’ In the first line ‘see’ was used figuratively and colloquially; we use ‘see’ to imply that we remember something or someone when we say “Although it’s been quite some time, I can see so-and-so still clearly.” Yeats continues the figurative language with ‘call up to the eyes’. Following this, the poet then gives us something of the man’s character, calling him ‘This wise and simple man.’ This is important, as we will later see; and this ends the first sentence.
The next sentence begins with Yeats’ contemplating the ideal face with the ambition of writing a poem that would be suitable for his (Yeats) people and their reality. From here on, the language becomes strong and he describes the reality and the people inhabiting it, which contrasts with the ideal of the fisherman: “The living men that I hate,/The dead man that I loved,/The craven man in his seat . . .’ These descriptions now give the reader a contrasting imagery from that of the opening few lines. You thought you were going to read a quieter poem, but you’re in the daily rambunctiousness of life and its participants. He uses words that are blunt: hate, love, craven, insolent, knave, witty, commonest, clever. He has no love for his contemporaries for he has experienced a great disappointment and the men he loved are those who are dead. He looks around and finds no one worthy of his affections and trust.
In his society, he sees insolent men never corrected, craven men remaining where they are, knaves behaving as they want to, witty men whose speech is vulgar, clever (as in smart arse or unethically so) men behaving as clowns, the wise disrespected and Art – culture – torn down and no longer studied for its inherent value to society. No wonder he chooses to turn his thoughts away to an idyllic image. We have read such language in other poems, notably Easter, 1916, written after this poem. But the sentiment is the same, Yeats’ affection for his people and experiences of utter disappointment and hurt. As the saying goes, where there is great disappointment there is great love.
The second stanza, and in effect the third line of the poem begin with Yeats’ giving us the length of time since he began writing the poem – ‘Maybe a twelvemonth since/Suddenly I began, . . .’, thus he has been carrying around this imagery in his mind for approximately a year, along with the words that he couldn’t fashion a complete poem with. His next line tells us partly why he began to think upon this idyllic imagery – ‘In scorn of this audience,’ – the contemporaries he hates. Again, another hard word is employed, scorn.
We have more detail of the man’s face given to us, which is imagined, as the poet informs us: ‘Imagining a man,/And his sun-freckled face,/And grey Connemara cloth[.]’ We then follow the fisherman on his purposeful walk in the Irish countryside to a place, that is not named, and which is hidden away and among the lively waters whose stones are ‘dark under froth[.]’ Yeats then supplies the reader with another detail that is so intimate and true that only a fisherman, or one who knows the actions of the casting a line, can write: ‘And the down-turn of the wrist/When the flies drop in the stream[.]’ That is beautiful and simple all at once.
The reader has been remembering the fisherman all along and because of the detail Yeats has provided, he seems real; however, Yeats surprises us by confessing that such a fisherman does not exist at all, now confirming his ‘Imagining a man’ a few lines earlier in the stanza: ‘A man who does not exist,/A man who is but a dream[.]’ We remember that in the first stanza Yeats was blunt in his statement ‘The living men that I hate,’ thus it is understood that no one alive can fit into his idyll and no one is worthy of his affections, furthermore of his poem. It is only an imaginary man that the poet feels is suitable for the lines has wanted to write. It is calm, imaginary Ireland.
The poem then closes with the poet’s cry of determination in writing the poem before the vision fades: ‘And cried, ‘Before I am old/I shall have written him one/Poem maybe as cold/And passionate as the dawn.’ Yeats admits the failure or limitation of language with ‘maybe’, as in his poem may not live up to a true reflection of his vision and imagination.
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