Never Give All The Heart By William Butler Yeats

This song comes to my mind while reading this poem, “Never Give All The Heart” by William Butler Yeats. The game of love has been played for many generations by both sexes. The question is who plays the game better? Nobody wants to be played but the male species tend to play the game so much better of not giving all of their heart away! It’s hard not to be played when you have an emotional soul.

Man has it down to a science of playing with women’s hearts! They know how to give just enough to lull the woman into giving herself away! “To passionate women if it seem / Certain, and they never dream / that it fades out from kiss to kiss” (3 – 5). All a man has to do is listen to what a woman is saying and then use her love language against her. Most times the woman is the one who gets played but when you have a man that is sentimental and sensitive to love, the game backfires on him every time! He doesn’t play the game like the normal man does and he’s left with a broken heart every time! “And who could play it well enough / If deaf and dumb and blind with love?” (11 – 12) If the man is so caught up in being in love he can’t play the game! He’s going to lose every time! He might as well throw in his player’s card because he’s
Most women don’t want a “soft man” so they will step all over the man that lives by his heart. So the man is scorned and maybe a bit bitter because he gave his heart to someone that chose to just play with it! “He that made this knows all the cost, / For he gave all his heart and lost” (13 – 14). Bummer for the man but I can’t feel too much empathy for him because man has been playing this game with women throughout many generations. It almost gives you a sense of vindication that they can finally feel the fool role that countless women have felt. That’s why the song resonates so hard in my head while reading this