To a Shade is a 1916 poem first published in W.B. Yeats's collection Responsibilities and Other Poems. In this twenty-six-line work, Yeats voices anger and resentment towards Dublin's middle classes on behalf of two historical figures: the late nineteenth-century political leader Charles Stewart Parnell, and the early twentieth-century gallerist and art dealer Hugh Lane, who had died only briefly before the publication of the poem. Yeats describes each of the men as heroes of Ireland—Parnell for his advocacy of home rule, and Lane for his failed attempt to create a municipal gallery in Dublin—but condemns their contemporaries for betraying and sabotaging their respective aims.
Yeats uses apostrophe, or direct address, to convey this narrative. He imagines Parnell as a shade, though he does so indirectly, never actually mentioning Parnell by name. By imagining the shade, or ghost, returning to modern Dublin, Yeats is able to delve into the complexity of Parnell's ongoing legacy. The figure of the ghost also gives Yeats room to compare Parnell and the slightly later figure of Lane directly. Ultimately, the speaker instructs the shade to return to the grave in order to avoid the public's cruelty—a harsh condemnation of modern Ireland.
The poem uses an ABACDC rhyme scheme and an iambic pentameter meter, but Yeats, like many of his modernist peers, pushes against the strictures of form rather than following them strictly. The poem features several abrupt, short lines that create a notable disruption to rhyme scheme and meter, as well as various subtler instances in which these patterns are momentarily broken.
Yeats wrote numerous poems about both Parnell and Lane, voicing support for Irish home rule and for Lane's municipal gallery. This is one of his best-known works. In it, he links these two goals together, suggesting that Lane's plan for artistic and cultural elevation is of a piece with Parnell's plan for political sovereignty.
