The Road at My Door
Meditations In Time Of Civil War
An affable Irregular, A heavily-built Falstaffian man, Comes cracking jokes of civil war As though to die by gunshot were The finest play under the sun. A brown Lieutenant and his men, Half dressed in national uniform, Stand at my door, and I complain Of the foul weather, hail and rain, A pear-tree broken by the storm. I count those feathered balls of soot The moor-hen guides upon the stream. To silence the envy in my thought; And turn towards my chamber, caught In the cold snows of a dream.
The Road at My Door - meaning Summary
Detachment Amid Civil War
Yeats presents a small domestic scene during civil conflict where a boisterous irregular and a lieutenant at the speaker's door interrupt ordinary life. The poem contrasts public violence with private trivialities—complaints about weather, a broken pear-tree—and ends with the speaker retreating inward to silence envy and find refuge in a dream. It registers emotional distance and the mind's small consolations when political turmoil intrudes on everyday existence.
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