Yeats imagines sailing to a legendary place of kings, dancing, and music, where love is light and changeable — you give a kiss for a kiss and move on without weight. The speaker longs for that freedom from heartache. Then he pictures finding a hare’s collar-bone at the water’s edge, worn thin by the water, and piercing it with a gimlet. Through this small white lens he would look back at the ordinary world, the “old bitter world where they marry in churches,” and laugh over the untroubled water at everyone still trapped in that solemn institution. The mood shifts from dreamy longing to mischievous, slightly bitter mockery. The bone feels like a charm, a magic way of seeing through convention and refusing to take marriage and its disappointments too seriously.
The Collar-Bone of a Hare — Summary
Would I could cast a sail on the water Where many a king has gone And many a king's daughter, And alight at the comely trees and the lawn, The playing upon pipes and the dancing, And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for a kiss. I would find by the edge of that water The collar-bone of a hare Worn thin by the lapping of water, And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare At the old bitter world where they marry in churches, And laugh over the untroubled water At all who marry in churches, Through the white thin bone of a hare.