Yeats' interest in Eastern Philosophy influenced many of his poems. His widely anthologized poem, "Lapis Lazuli," is about finding tranquility in chaos.
The speaker begins by telling us that “the hysterical women” are disgusted with artists who are always detached, because the times demand some serious action or else they will all be obliterated.
Yeats wrote this poem in 1938 just as WWII was beginning in Europe. So those women are fearing they will be become victims of the airplane and Zeppelins that were used to bomb London during WWI. The allusion to “King Billy bomb-balls in” is a pun on William III at the Battle of the Boyne and Kaiser Wilhelm.
First Stanza
Yeats takes his line from an anonymous ballad that appeared in the Irish Ministry: “King James pitched his tents between / The lines for to retire; / but King William threw his bomb-balls in, / And set them all on fire.” *Yeats fashions his pun this way: “. . . Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out, / Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in / Until the town lie beaten flat.” So the first stanza sets the stage for Yeats' commentary on remaining tranquil under stressful events, but unlike the “hysterical women,” the speaker of the poem feels that art is the way to transcending the chaos.
Second Stanza
The second stanza begins, “All perform their tragic play, / There struts Hamlet, there is Lear, / That's Ophelia, that Cordelia. . . .” These lines liken “real life” to the stage. The actors portray their roles without “break[ing] up their lines to weep.” The actors do not stop to cry over the tragedy that befalls their characters, because they know “that Hamlet and Lear are gay; / Gaiety transforming all that dread.”
The term “gay” for Yeats’ era had a different set of connotations from those we 21st century Americans attach to it. It did not refer to homosexuality, nor did it refer to lighthearted fun. The term's meaning was closer to impetuous or possessing a lack of seriousness, not given to deep depression about one's lot in life. Actors, even while portraying a grieving character like a Hamlet or a Lear, remain detached. And even if all the curtains on all stages drop at once, “It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.” “It” refers to tragedy—“Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.” The art of the theatre provides the actors a way of transcending the tragedy, even as they perform it.
Third Stanza
The third stanza reminds us that “Old civilisations [have been] put to the sword.” Civilizations have risen and fallen, like great waves of the sea. It is a gloomy thought, but “they (the civilizations) and their wisdom went to rack.” Then the speaker reminds us that the art of Callimachus, “who handled marble as if it were bronze” is now gone. But then “All things fall”—then we have a glimmer of optimism, because even though they fall, they “are built again.”
Yeats was given a lapis lazuli carving in 1935 by Harry Clifton (Henry Talbot de Vere Clifton), the poet to whom Yeats dedicates this poem. Now we come to the last two stanzas for which the poem is titled. The carving on lapis lazuli features a scene wherein three Chinese men are climbing up a mountain. A long-legged bird flies overhead, and Yeats tells us that bird is “A symbol of longevity.” Also, one of the Chinese men, Yeats assumes, is a servant, because he carries a musical instrument.
The three men are trekking up the mountain toward what Yeats calls a “little half-way house.” But I imagine that little house to be a temple. Yeats interprets the edifice as something resembling an Irish pub, where the men will stop for a drink, listen to some mournful melodies and then trek on. I think the men are Buddhist monks who will stop at the temple to worship; the musical instrument will be used in chanting.
Individual Interpretation
I would like to add that this is a place where interpretation can be free for the individual. There is nothing in the poem that determines the little edifice is either a pub or a temple. Because I have not seen the craving which Yeats is describing, I base my interpretation on the paintings of the artist Sesshu, who traveled widely in China, painting scenes very much like the one Yeats describes.
But the final point may be made, whether we take the little half-way house as pub or temple. Yeats writes: “I / Delight to imagine them seated there; / There, on the mountain and the sky, / On all the tragic scene they stare.” So Yeats has taken us from Western civilization that rises and falls with tragedy to the East where tragedy still exists.
Art and Religion
“One asks for mournful melodies; / Accomplished fingers begin to play”: The Chinese men's listening to mournful melodies parallels the Western theatre audience watching Hamlet or King Lear, and as they watch, “Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, / Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay,” that is, they are detached, whether listening to the mournful melody or chanting in worship.
Art, similar to religion, from theatre to poetry to music has the power to help the human mind and heart transcend the pain of tragedy for the ancients as well as for the contemporaries in both Western and Eastern culture.
*Richard J. Finneran, ed. The Poems of W. B. Yeats. (New York: Macmillan, 1983) 669.
