A Deep-Sworn Vow — Summary

In Yeats’s short lyric, the speaker addresses someone who broke a serious promise, perhaps a vow of love or loyalty. That betrayal, strangely, has led to other friendships: “Others because you did not keep / That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine.” But the opening does not sound grateful—it sounds like an old wound still open. The poem turns in the last three lines to moments when control slips: facing death, climbing toward sleep, or growing excited with wine. In those unguarded states, the person’s face suddenly appears. The speaker is not over the loss. The feeling is less anger than an involuntary haunting—a mix of longing, unresolved hurt, and memory returning when he is most exposed. The mood is quiet but intense, intimate and slightly eerie.