"On being asked for a War Poem" is a poem by William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

 written on February 6, 1915 in response to a request by Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

 that Yeats compose a political poem about World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. Yeats changed the poem's title from "To a friend who has asked me to sign his manifesto to the neutral nations" to "A Reason for Keeping Silent" before sending it in a letter to James, which Yeats wrote at Coole Park

Coole Park

Coole Park is a nature reserve of approximately operated by the Irish National Parks & Wildlife Service and is located a few miles west of Gort, County Galway, Ireland. The park contains extensive woodlands and a series of turloughs with 6 kilometres of signposted nature trails plus a formal...

 on August 20, 1915. The poem was prefaced with a note stating: "It is the only thing I have written of the war or will write, so I hope it may not seem unfitting." The poem was first published in Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...

's The Book of the Homeless in 1916 as "A Reason for Keeping Silent". When it was later reprinted in The Wild Swans at Coole

The Wild Swans at Coole

The Wild Swans at Coole is a collection of poems by William Butler Yeats, first published in 1917. It is also the name of a poem in that collection...

, the title was changed to "On being asked for a War Poem".

Yeats and World War I

When Henry James asked Yeats to submit a poem for publication in Wharton's collection which was intended to raise money for Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 refugees, Yeats intended for the poem to state his political position on the "European War". The poem's original title, "To a friend who has asked me to sign his manifesto to the neutral nations," appears, in the words of Jim Haughey, to have a "toysome evasiveness" regarding the politics surrounding the war. Peter McDonald suggests that the changes in the poem's title reflects Yeats's changing political positions from the beginning of the war until its end in 1919 when Yeats publishes The Wild Swans at Coole. Although there are minute variations in the wording of the version published in The Book of the Homeless and the one found in The Wild Swans at Coole, the poem's overall form remained the same even as the title changed. In the first two lines of the poem, Yeats states that it is better for a "poet to keep his mouth shut" than to enter into debates about wars and politics, feeling that a poet should speak only about traditional lyric subjects and leave the war to soldiers and politicians.

Tim Kendall, in The Oxford handbook of British and Irish war poetry, suggests that Yeats's alternatives to the subject of war stated in lines 5-6, are the more traditional subjects of poetry which the poet finds suitable material, yet Kendall sees the reversion of the subject back to Yeats's generic topics as "self-unwriting". The mention of the word "silent" in the title published in Wharton's collection, appears contrary to the construction of poetry or the poetic voice. In the poem "Politics

Politics (poem)

thumb|right|Photograph of William Butler Yeats taken February 7, 1933."Politics" is a poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats written on May 24, 1938...

", Yeats begins the poem where "On being asked for a War Poem" finishes with the opening lines:

How can I, that girl standing there,

My attention fix

On Roman or on Russian

Or on Spanish politics?

Although "Politics" describes a different political situation facing the world in the 1930s, Yeats again chooses not to focus on politics but the "girl standing there."

Poem text

I THINK it better that in times like these
A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.