In Memory of W. B. Yeats

The image of the public statues “disfigured” (Line 3) by the snow symbolizes what may happen to great men and women after their deaths. They may be appreciated by their fellow citizens—hence the commemoration in the form of a statue—but they have also relinquished control of their work and thus their legacy, which must now be interpreted and decided on by others. Several times in the elegy, this is shown to apply to Yeats, who has just spent “his last afternoon as himself” (Line 12). Judgment may not always be kind either, as the word “disfigured” suggests. Yeats will be “punished” because his work may now be assessed “under a foreign code of conscience” (Line 21)—that is, a different set of values, which may distort the dead poet’s idea of his purpose and/or his achievement.