Yeats started his long literary career as a romantic poet and gradually evolved into a modernist

poet. When he began publishing poetry in the 1880s, his poems had a lyrical, romantic style,
and they focused on love, longing and loss, and Irish myths. His early writing follows the
conventions of romantic verse, utilizing familiar rhyme schemes, metric patterns, and poetic
structures.
SUMMARY:
SECTION ONE
Stanza 1:
The poet is troubled and is greatly surprised at the paradox of absurdity that has been tied
to the poet in the form of his decaying age. He compares his ageing to a kind of mockery
which looks odd to everyone just the way when something is tied to a dog’s tail.
Stanza 2:
The poet says that in spite of getting older, his imagination has never been so passionate,
powerful and so capable of thinking better things as well as expressing them in a better
way.
SECTION TWO:
Stanza 3:
The poet in a state of dilemma keeps walking in quick short steps on the Tower and while
he walks he looks at the foundation of a house where a tree has come out from the earth
and it looks like a dark finger pointing towards the sky. The poet’s imagination takes a
flight as the day comes to an end. He calls forth the images and memories from the
dilapidated conditions of the houses and from ancient trees.
Stanza 4:
The poet talks about Mrs. French who used to live beyond a ridge. Then he narrates a
devious incident that happened to her. While Mrs. French was serving wine and making
merry, her dining table was lighted up by the silver candlesticks and stones, one of her
servants thought that he could devise his lady’s wish so he went and clipped a poor
farmer’s ears with a garden shear and brought it to the lady covered in a dish. All this was
carried out because the farmer thought he had committed an act of insolence.
Stanza 5:
The poet says that when he was young there were still a few people alive who
remembered a song that praised the beauty of an young peasant girl who dwelled
somewhere upon a rocky place. The poet believes that if the girl was still alive, the
farmer would be overjoyed at the remembrance of the girl through the song.
Stanza 6:
The song had the power to excite people. Influenced by the potent lines of the song to
such a level that some people would even rise up from the table where they had been
drinking and check up whether the girl really existed or not.
Stanza 7:
The poet says the most interesting part is that the writer of the song was a blind man. On
further consideration, it was not as that interesting because Homer was a blind poet too.
Homer created the beautiful Helen who betrayed so many hearts. The poet wishes to have
a proper balance between subjectivism and objectivism or else his poetry would also
drive his readers crazy as Homer’s poetry about Helen and the blind man’s poetry about
that peasant girl did.
Stanza 8:
The poet is the creator of the figure Hanrahan. Hanrahan is a figure who moves in
neighboring cottages sometimes drunk and sometimes sober. The poet says he was able
to see him in various situations. Some of the situation included old man’s juggleries,
stumbling, falling down and groping about here and there.
Stanza 9:
The poet narrates another story about some good fellows who were playing cards in an
old barn. When it was the turn of the old juggler, he did something to the cards and
changed them except for one single card into a pack of hounds. The single card was then
turned into a hare. Seeing Hanrahan rose from that place and pursued the hounds to some
destination.
Stanza 10:
The poet has forgotten where Hanrahan had taken the hounds to. He deviates from that
incident and narrates another one. He talks about one man who was so troubled that he
was not moved by music or love or the clipped ear of his enemy. He was bankrupt and
there was no one in his life even to tell when his dog-days would end.
Stanza 11:
The poet says that in the same house, a great deal has happened over the centuries before
the ruin came.
Stanza 12:
The poet recalls all the figures which includes the blind poet who kept roaming and
celebrated the girl’s beauty. It also includes Hanrahan who was made to wander through
God’s forsaken meadows. Mrs. French is another who was gifted with such a fine ear by
her servant.
Stanza 13:
Now the poet puts forth question which he wants to ask us all. He asks his readers that
whether his rage against old age is something common to all old men and women both
rich and poor or not. Have these people been raging against the old age as he is doing it
then. He says that all the eyes are impatient to leave but he has already found his answer.
The poet permits them except Hanrahan whose memories are badly needed by Yeats.
Stanza 14:
Yeats now talks to Hanrahan and says he is suitable for his purposes as he is one
lecherous fellow who had uncountable love affairs. The poet wants to bring out all his
thoughts that he has discovered in his grave. Yeats is sure that he has understood by then
the true importance of the sexual desires that were accompanied with the invitation of a
softening touch or sigh.
Stanza 15:
The poet has a question in his mind that whether the imagination of man dwells upon a
woman whom he has not been able to get. If the imagination lingers on the lost woman
then one has to also admit that the loss of a woman is mostly due to pride, cowardice,
subtle thoughts and conscience. All these things prevent one from taking the memory of
this loss and the day is blotted out.

Stanza 16:
In this stanza the poet talks about his will he dedicates his will to the upstanding men and
to the inheritors. Next, he talks about his faith which he declares that he doesn’t care for
Pluto or Plotinus. He has faith only in men who made all the things that go into the
making of life and death.
Stanza 17:
The daws are seen to be chattering and screaming at a loophole and the loophole is
covered with twigs. The mother daw will rest on layers of twigs and will warm her nest.
Stanza 18:
The poet says that he has left not only pride but also faith in his will. He talks about those
upstanding men who climb mountains and are made up of some special metal

stanza 19:
In the final stanza, the poet says that it is time to reshape his soul. He wants his soul to
study in a learned school and he is going to educate his soul to that extent where worse
things such as decay cannot affect it. The soul of the poet should be like the clouds of the
sky or like a bird’s sleepy cry among the shades.

“The Tower” remains one of the memorable and forceful of Yeats’ poems. The writing
style is passionate rhetoric and great skill has been used to compose the poem. “The
Tower” is a complex yet satisfying poem in spite of its variety of tones and moods