"A Poet to His Beloved", by William Butler Yeats

In his poem "A  Poet to His Beloved", William Butler Yeats lyrically declares his love to a woman.  The poem instills deep personal and emotional feelings in its verses.  The poem suggests feelings of both passion and respect rather than lust between the two, implying the seriousness of their relationship.

Yeats begins the poem with showing his respect rather than lust.  In the first line of the poem, "reverent hands" (Yeats line 1) connote feelings of respect that the speaker feels for the woman.  The image of open hands being held up is symbolic as a sign of offering and sacrifice.  The speaker, in this poem, is offering up part of his soul to the woman as a sign of love.  What he holds in his hands is even more telling of this.  In his hands, the speaker holds "the books of [his] numberless dreams" (line 2).  The fact that there are "books" of dreams and that the dreams are "numberless" suggests that the speaker is deeply infatuated with the woman.

Yeats then goes to describe the woman.  The first description the speaker gives of the woman is that she is "white" (line 3).  The color white connotes purity and innocence.  The woman can then be seen as a representation of the speaker's innocence, change the poem to a message to one's wistful youth rather than that of love.  The color white can also connote feelings of intense, blinding emotion.  In this way, the woman can be seen as an almost a subject of worship as the speaker offers his soul for the experience of this emotion.  The woman is also described as being "worn" by "passion" (line 3).  This effect of passion suggests that the passion between the two is strenuous and their relationship is not only intense but also taxing.

Yeats then moves away from the personal descriptions to create an extended metaphor of the relationship between the speaker and the woman.  The tides seen in the passage "wears the dove-gray sands" (line 4).  Doves, as symbols of peace and purity, are described as gray in this line.  This graying of the doves suggests a tarnished purity and faded glory that is no longer there.  This idea of faded glory is also seen in the tides as they "wear" (line 4) away the sands.  This line instills a feeling of nostalgic endearment of the woman by the speaker.

In this sense, the "numberless dreams" (line 7) that the speaker brings the white woman can be seen as memories of a time gone by.  The poem, then, reminisces the feelings of passion and the "fire" (line 6) of lust that is now replaced by deep respect.