For Anne GregoryW.B. Yeats · Poem

The poem opens with a young man's voice — but his words are introduced by an unnamed speaker who reports them. The young man is telling Anne Gregory that no young man will ever love her for herself alone. They will always be caught by her hair — described magnificently as 'honey-coloured ramparts' (ramparts are the high walls of a fortress). The word 'despair' is significant: the hair is so beautiful it throws men into helplessness. But the young man's point is a sad one: men are attracted to the external, not the inner person. 'For the yellow hair' — the phrase is repeated, almost ruefully, to fix the problem in our minds.

Poetic devices in this stanza

• Metaphor (ramparts) — 'Honey-coloured ramparts of your hair' — ramparts are the defensive walls of a castle. Anne's hair is compared to high, golden fortress walls: beautiful and impressive, but also barriers. The metaphor suggests that her external beauty both attracts and traps men, keeping them from seeing what lies within.
• Repetition / Refrain — 'The yellow hair' appears at the end of each stanza, functioning like a refrain. The repetition reinforces how men keep returning to the same surface feature, unable to look past it.
• Direct address — The poem is addressed to 'you' — Anne Gregory herself. This gives the poem an intimate, confessional quality, as if Yeats is speaking to her directly.

Anne Gregory's voice enters. She says she could easily dye her hair brown, black, or carrot-coloured — implying she is perfectly willing to remove the very thing that attracts men superficially, to test whether they would still love her. This is a bold response: she is not flattered by being admired for her hair. She wants to be loved for something deeper. The second stanza ends with her implicit challenge to men: if you love me for my hair, I can take that away.

Poetic devices in this stanza

• Anne's agency — By saying she could change her hair colour, Anne refuses to be defined by her appearance. She takes control of the very thing men obsess over, showing that she understands the superficiality of their admiration and does not value it.
• Contrast — The colours she proposes — brown, black, carrot — are all ordinary. By placing them against the 'honey-coloured' and 'yellow' hair of the first stanza, Yeats emphasises how Anne is willing to trade her celebrated beauty for the chance to be loved truly.

The final stanza delivers the poem's conclusion — and it is a quietly devastating one. An old religious man has found a text (in religious scripture) that proves only God can love a person for their inner self alone, not for their external qualities. This is the poem's central argument stated plainly: human love is always, at some level, attracted by the external. Only divine love is capable of seeing and loving the inner person completely. The poem ends not with comfort but with a kind of melancholy truth.

Poetic devices in this stanza

• Allusion to religion / scripture — 'An old religious man…found a text to prove' — the reference to religious scripture gives the conclusion authority. It is not just the poet's opinion; it is presented as a proven truth from a higher source.
• Only God — the divine contrast — By saying only God can love Anne for herself alone, Yeats draws a sharp line between human love (which is always entangled with appearance) and divine love (which is pure and unconditional). This elevates the poem from a love lyric to a philosophical statement.
• Refrain (yellow hair) — The poem ends on 'And not your yellow hair' — the same phrase that has appeared throughout. Coming after the religious statement, the refrain now sounds almost like a sigh: even God's love must be defined against the distraction of beauty that entraps everyone else.