I read it similarly to Ann. Two wonderful, lapidary Yeats poems come immediately to mind:
“Words” and
“The Great Day”.
I was thinking of Yeats just yesterday in contrast to Wallace Stevens’s
“The Comedian As The Letter C”, a poem of related subject matter, so far as I can ken. I’ll just say that IMHO, Stevens suffers by the comparison. I was going to start a thread to discuss Stevens’s work, but after reading said poem I thought better of it, and chopped wood instead. Which I judged superior to kicking the neighbor’s dog. Perhaps I still shall start that thread one day. I like some of Stevens very much.