Aedh Tells of the Rose in his Heart
The speaker feels that everything ugly, damaged, aged, or harsh in the world violates the beloved’s ideal image, which blooms like a rose deep within his heart. Ordinary sounds and sights—the crying child, the cart, the ploughman in winter mud—seem unbearable because they clash with that inward beauty. He longs to remake the earth, sky, and water into a perfect golden setting, then withdraw to a green knoll where the renewed world can serve as a worthy enclosure for his dream of the beloved.
By W.B. Yeats · First published 1899 · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Love Poetry, Symbolist Poetry · 139 words
First lines
All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, / The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, / The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould, / Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; / I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart, / With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold / For my dreams of your image that blossoms / a rose in the deeps of my heart.
What this Textopian page supports
Aedh Tells of the Rose in his Heart is listed on Textopian as a poem by W.B. Yeats, dated 1899 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: W.B. Yeats
- Date: 1899 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Love Poetry, Symbolist Poetry, Romantic Poetry, Irish Literary Revival Poetry
- Length: 139 words
- Structure: 1 section, 2 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)
Good citation fit
- Work identity for Aedh Tells of the Rose in his Heart by W.B. Yeats
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
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Genres
- Lyric Poetry — The work is a short, intensely personal poem structured around musical repetition, evocative imagery, and the speaker's inward emotional response.
- Love Poetry — Its central subject is an idealized beloved whose image remains vividly alive in the speaker's heart, expressed through the recurring rose metaphor.
- Symbolist Poetry — The poem relies on symbolic images—especially the rose, the heart, and a remade golden world—to convey spiritual and emotional meanings beyond literal description.
- Romantic Poetry — It emphasizes individual feeling, longing, imagination, ideal beauty, and dissatisfaction with the harshness and ugliness of ordinary reality.
Tags
lyric poetry · Irish literature · symbolism · romantic longing · unrequited love · idealized beauty · mysticism · mythological imagery · Celtic Revival · dreamlike atmosphere · nature symbolism · the rose