Politics

• This poem by WB Yeats is about his view that politics is less important than youth and love. The poet refuses to accept that you can define people as political animals, despite the famous quote of Thomas Mann in the epigraph.
• ‘In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms' Thomas Mann 
• In this poem Yeats confesses that he is a dreamer. He is aware of the reality of world politics, but it is of no personal importance to him. He longs for the delights of female beauty.
• In this short poem of one stanza Yeats suggests that he cannot concentrate on world politics as long as he can see the image of a beautiful girl. He recognises that Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy and Stalin in the Soviet Union all represent problems for the world: 

          ‘maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms’.

• But he wishes to ignore these problems and dream about female beauty. He compares himself to journalists and politicians. As an old man he’d love to have his youth again rather than discuss war with journalists and politicians. He is saying that for him love and youth are more desirable than debating learnedly about politics.
• A different way of looking at the poem is to believe that the young girl represents Ireland and that Yeats would ignore world politics and pay attention only to Ireland.