William Butler Yeats - Brown Penny

I WHISPERED, 'I am too young.'

And then, 'I am old enough';

Wherefore I threw a penny

To find out if I might love.

'Go and love, go and love, young man,

If the lady be young and fair.'

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,

There is nobody wise enough

To find out all that is in it,

For he would be thinking of love

Till the stars had run away

And the shadows eaten the moon.

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

One cannot begin it too soon.


William Butler Yeats, 1910



Biographical References

Biography -  by Poemhunter

Biography - by Wikipedia



Analyses of Poem


FIRST ANALYSIS

by DC Aries

http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/poetry-analysis-brown-penny-by-william-butler-yeats-2-11904/

 

William Butler Yeats was a writer of Irish and British descent. He was born in Ireland in 1865. He went on to become an accomplished poet and won the Nobel Prize for poetry. The poem, “Brown Penny“  was published in 1910 and appeared in a volume of poetry entitled, The Green Helmet and Other Poems. The theme of Brown Penny focused on romantic relationships and what it really means to fall in love. The poem opens with the lines,

 

I whispered, ‘I am too young,’

And then, ‘I am old enough’;

Wherefore I threw a penny

To find out if I might love.

 

Yeats writes about a young man who is questioning whether or not he is at an age where he can truly appreciate and experience love. He has conflicting feelings about it so he throws a penny in hopes of finding an answer. The remaining lines of the stanza include the answer.

 

‘Go and love, go and love, young man,

If the lady be young and fair.’

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

I am looped in the loops of her hair.

 

The answer the young may gets its that if she is the right woman, he will find love with her. The answer disregards age and explains that when its with the right person, anyone can love. The man then professes his love by stating, “I am looped in the loops of her hair.” 

 

In the second half of the poem Yeats writes,

 

O love is the crooked thing,

There is nobody wise enough

To find out all that is in it,

For he would be thinking of love

Till the stars had run away

And the shadows eaten the moon.

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

One cannot begin it too soon.

 

In this stanza, the man continues his conversation with the penny and comes to the realization that nobody can ever truly understand love or “all that is in it.” There is too much to explore and to know everything there is to know about love a man would have to think “Till the stars had run away/And the shadows eaten the moon.” Therefore, he concludes that no one is too young or too old to love because it takes more than a lifetime to understand.

 

A poetry element Yeats really works with in this poem is diction. His word choice is creative and unique. This is a conflict within himself, but he uses “brown penny,” as someone to converse with.  The choice of using a penny is appropriate. By flipping the penny, he is taking a chance. There is also a fair amount of repetition. “brown penny” is repeated over and over and adds to the flow of the poem. “Go and love,” is also repeated several times, to show that it is an important line. “Looped in the loops of her hair,” is a great line that uses the word “loop” as two different meanings. Looped means entangled in this woman and also describes strands of her hair. Loop can also refer to the uncertainty in love. This is another way of expressing his affection for the woman. He shows more creativity in the second stanza with the lines, “Till the stars had run away/And the shadows eaten the moon.” This is an unusual phrase that most readers won’t have heard before, but still, in the context of the poem, the readers will understand what Yeats is saying.

 

The major symbol in this poem is the “brown penny.” To find out whether or not he is in love, the man  flips a penny. He takes a chance. This is what love is all about. Individuals take a chance when they commit or fall in love with someone. They don’t know how its going to end and they risk their heart and their lives for the sake of love. As with flipping a penny, the young man doesn’t know how it will land or what the future holds. But he risks it for love.

 

“Brown Penny” was an unique, yet honest poem by Yeats. Unlike many love poems throughout history, it wasn’t boring or generic. It used the right amount of diction, repetition and symbolism to capture the meaning. Yeats showed the emotion of young love in an effective way. “Brown Penny” was an incredible poem by a talented man.

 

 

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SECOND ANALYSIS

by Raina Lorring

http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/poetry-analysis-brown-penny-by-william-butler-yeats-11802/

 

Poetry is meant to be heard. Readers can not get the full effect of many works if they simple read the piece to themselves. This is why many poetry lovers find it helpful to read the works out loud and poetry readings are still popular. The poem “Brown Penny” by William Butler Yeats is meant to heard and read. The poet was born in Dublin in 1865. He stood out among other poets of his period, who used a free verse style,  because he wrote lyrical poetry. “Brown Penny” is more of a love song than a poem.

 

The “penny” is an important symbol in the poem. In the culture in which Yeats grew up, the “penny” is a symbol for love for commoners. The reason for this is because love is something that is priceless. A common tradition of the period was to have a “Penny Wedding”, where guest were expected to bring their own food.

 

Yeats also uses the “penny” to show that he is taking a chance on love. This is apparent since a “penny” is currency and invokes the image of gambling. This can be seen in the line, “Wherefore I threw a penny.” This line can also be symbol for wishing for love because the act of trowing a “penny” down a well has been a long standing tradition of making a wish.

 

The style of the poem is almost a whirling dance with words. Yeats skillfully wrote a poem that comes to life when the audience hears the piece as it was meant to be heard, in song. The speaker in the poem is “looped” in his lovers hair. This word gives the image of the dance and also shows how the speaker is bound to his lover.

 

Yeats shows how much lovers can clash with the lines: “O love is the crooked thing, / There is nobody wise enough / To find out all that is in it.” Love is a struggle of give and take.

 

“Brown Penny” also shows how as difficult love can be, it is not something that can ever be escaped. Yeats says that the speaker “would be thinking of love / Till the stars had run away / And the shadows eaten the moon.” These lines mean that love is not only a struggle but an eternal one.

 

Love is a dance and poem is meant to be heard. The skillful words of “Brown Penny” need a voice to give them life. Yeats understood this and captures the conflicting emotions of love in his poem “Brown Penny.”

 

 

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THIRD ANALYSIS

by Milton Johanides

http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/what-is-the-meaning-of-yeats-poem-brown-penny-8884/

 

Brown Penny by W B Yeats is a short poem written in 1910 and deals in a lighthearted way with the serious business of a young man considering falling in love. The young man, perhaps Yeats himself, tosses a coin, the brown penny, to see if he is old enough to love. In an age wrought with superstitions such an action may not have sounded as amusing as it does today. Victorian Britain was a society which took seriously the behavior of ordinary objects, hence all the wedding traditions we are still familiar with, such as dressing in white, wearing a veil, having something borrowed, something blue, etc. The Victorians even had a theory about the type of marriage a couple would enjoy depending on the colour of the bride´s dress, the day of the wedding and even the state of the weather. So Yeats is, perhaps tongue in cheek, borrowing from this culture to determine his own fate.

 

The coin encourages him to “go and love” especially if the lady “be young and fair.” The last line of the first verse “looped in the loops of the hair” suggests the looping of the coin as it travels through the air as well as drawing on an image favoured by Yeats of being draped in the hair of his loved one, as in “He Bids His Beloved Be At Peace” (line 10: and your hair fall over my breast).

 

In contrast to the lightheartedness of the first verse, the second introduces a feeling of frustration at the immense power of love and its ability to deceive. “Love is the crooked thing” he says, in other words something that twists and turns, not in lovely loops like a girl´s long hair, but in an unpredictable way that can confuse. “Crooked” of course also implies dishonesty, even illegal activity, so love is very much on the wrong side of the tracks in this verse. Yeats has made it an enemy, testing his wisdom.  “There is nobody wise enough to find all that is in it,” is a despairing line, commenting on the immensity of the task facing a young man encountering romance for the first time. Today, love is perhaps a more transient thing, experienced easily and quickly abandoned if it fails, but in Yeats´ time, when propriety mattered and behaviour was governed by religious beliefs, individuals had to think very carefully before entering a relationship, taking into careful consideration not only the possible uncomfortable results of difficult romance, but also what other people thought. Falling in love promised a minefield of adverse social consequences.

 

But it is not the social environment that concerns Yeats here, it is the enigmatic quality of love that baffles him. The world would end, he says, before anyone, no matter how wise, could understand it. Using the stars and the moon in this context is deliberately invoking the imagery of the romantic poets of an earlier century, but giving it a more morbid twist.

 

Still, far from putting off the young man, the size of the task before him only encourages him further. “One cannot begin it too soon” brings the poem back to its lighthearted beginning and leaves the reader with a wry smile. This is the fate of all mankind, that no matter how insurmountable the odds of finding true love are, we each of us attempt it, time and time again. Given the unfathomable nature of the exercise, tossing a brown penny has as much chance of bringing us success as anything else.