(Poem #1) The Song of Wandering Aengus I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire aflame, But something rustled on the floor, And some one called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun. |
The Song of Wandering Aengus -- William Butler Yeats
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I agree that there's a marked shift in feeling in the last stanza, but
the tone is not quite 'weary'... 'poignant' is how I would put it.
Lots of undertones, though. Most especially, a sense of loss - all those
years gone by, spent on a fruitless quest... what makes it all the more
touching is Aengus' determination not to give up on his search, his
conviction that all will be well if he can but find his glimmering girl.
A heartbreakingly beautiful poem.
I find that there can be mixtures of dreams with mythological belief in
all thoughts of what love is. A seeking of an "ideal" ...possibly having
answers being found with in a belief system. There are at times a
thought put into the brain as to what/who we should seek. Old myths talk
of fairies coming to live in the human world though rituals and ernest
seeking. Sometimes that human can spend an entire life searching. How
memories/belief sytems become an avenue of search.....Desire becomes an
attainable dream if we choose to wholeheartedly search.
Still a poetic dream......
Circe
I seem to recall hearing this poem not once but twice on "Writer's
Almanac," a daily 5-minute segment on Public Radio, where they speak of
birthdays, aniverseries, and such for the day, and give one poem. There's
nothing quite like hearing Garrison Keeler read the poem, in that marvelous
voice he has. It does something to re-affirm poetry as an auditory, as
well as a strictly cereberal, artform.
But anyway, it is a very good poem, evocative of the old folk tales of
faeries disguised as animals (one about a seal comes to mind) and men who
persue them for their wives. I agree with the shift in tone, though there
is something very positive about the way he speaks of finding her, and so
though you feel that the odds are stacked against him, he will eventually
find his "glimmering girl."
I do love the last line, too. It definitely ranks up there in one of the
loveliest lines in poetry.
Yet another quest story. Ah but the quest's the thing! Really the
quest is all any of us have.
Jackie
Some observations on "Song of the Wandering Aengus"
This haunting, mystic poem by W. B, Yeats was popularized in the early
'70s by folksinger Judy Collins in her sung version, titled "Golden
Apples of the Sun," which is how I first learned of it. Her version
differs, by choice or laxity, in three significant places, all of which
are, in my view, lesser renderings of Yeats' images.
He wrote that the silver trout had become "a glimmering girl",
"glistening" in her version.
The girl "faded through the brightening air." She "vanished in ..." for
Ms. Collins.
In the poet's intended search for this wondrous girl, he would find out
where she has gone and "kiss her lips and take her hands" while Ms.
Collins would merely "see her lips and take her hand." The version she
sings may have been phrased here to avoid lesbian connotations for a
female singer, but it does seem weakened and a little strange.
In the first instance the figure may be glistening from its formar
contact with the water but for it to glimmer is clearly indicative of a
strange and changeable state and a better wording. Similarly, for the
girl to "vanish" in the brightening air one may imagine an image merely
disappearing in brighter air, but the phrase "faded through" comes
closer to attempting to explain the magical process. Also the vanishing
is apt to be a guicker action, while fading is prolonged and leads into
the subsequent yearning, clearly a choice in keeping with the poem's
theme.
The line chosen for the song title is the same as that of a 1953 book of
Ray Bradbury stories; he may also have enjoyed the poem. The theme of
golden apples harks back to Greek mythology but I could find no linkup
there with the sun, implying for me that it was Yeats' connection,
powerful and apparently thus well-remembered. Deservedly so, one of my
favorite poems.
WHS
The poem has a complete quality and it is a beautiful thing to recite, to read to think about even to look at.
Its appeal does not diminish, it grows and like every beautiful thing it is not possible to tire of it.
The fire in the love-God's head is the drive that makes all life worthwhile. In its simplist form this fire
determines the outcome of our lives. The importance of the quest is the issue, no matter what the outcome may
be. The Hazel Wood, the wand, the stripping, the threading, the hooking, the dropping and the catching are all
life's work and all so beautifully reduced to a single simple ancient act.
The quest, which remains unresolved at the poem's end, survives and is almost fulfilled by the determination
alone. This is a love-God's song. I suspect he sang it throughout his love-God's life and if love-Gods live
as long as I think they do, then he is still singing it. So there is this eternal hope - a believer's hope and
the poet is young at the point of writing and youth is eternal.
The Silver and Golden Apples could be anything. I don't know the Greek connection. I don't want to know.
They are a perfect fit, day or night, for any of life's important fruits.
Vico.
In "Early Irish Myths and Sagas" (Penguin Classics) Jeffrey Gantz mentions
that the story "The Dream of Oengus" (reproduced in full in this book) is
the "ultimate source of Yeats's poem 'The Dream of Wandering Aengus'." It is
a very short story with only a few recognizable themes that seem to bear
direct connection to Yeats's poem, however. In the story, the girl
approaches Oengus as he lay sleeping, and she vanishes as soon as he
welcomes her. She continues to visit him in this fashion over the course of
a year, and he falls in love with her, eventually embarking on a search to
find her. She is described as wearing a silver necklace and a chain of
burnished gold. While she does not assume the form of a fish, she apparently
assumes the form of a bird one year and a human the next, so the
tranformation theme is somewhat intact. If this really is the source for
Yeats's interpretation, I wonder where he came by the rest of the poem's
imagery.
Comments on The Song of Wandering Aengus
<and a leetil test of the comments system> (:
A lovely poem - to read and recite. And very poignant.
The repetition in the last 2 lines reminded me of Robert Frost's 'miles to
go...miles to go...'.
- a feeling of longing.
Do the Golden Apples remind you of Perseus?
aditya.
Beautiful! Realism, economy, sensuousness.
Daniela.
William Butler Yeats' poem The Song of the Wandering
Aengus is much simpler than what I hear you make it to
be. It is the story of the 3 stages of a man, if he
is intelligent and lucky.
First, it is the trout that is the object of desire.
But trout are mythical creatures told by elders as the
prize of prizes, but elusive and hard to catch. It
takes skill and wile to trick the animal onto the hook
and then, you must have reflexes like fire to set the
hook and a firm gentleness to bring it to net. So, we
tell our young ones of the valor to be gained by
catching this little piece of silver and, fools that
they are, will get up at 4:00 am to try and fish
amongst the impenetrable tangles of willow for the
prize of manhood and recognition.
But this young man does not follow the rules. He
instead strips a willow wand and hooks a berry to a
thread. No invisible leader, royal coachman and 3
piece fly rod here. This young man is a king and he
acts with an internal motivation regardless of the
rules of angling. He has become innocent of the rules
because he has a fire in his head and responds to it.
He catches a little silver trout but does not throw it
back because it is too small he keeps it and returns
to his abode with only one fish, not enough to make a
meal, but enough, to satisfy the soul. Here he is
changed into an individual who has his own motivations
rather than those handed down to him by others, by the
group.
Sure enough, as soon as he begins his objective
treatment of the fish it is no longer a fish but a
girl, with apple blossoms in her hair. This is the
second myth, the myth of love and desire that fades
when the light grows stronger. Her's is the beauty of
the world and flowers adorn her as naturally as a
fruit tree in spring time. These are the experiences
of a grown man who sees and desires the fruit of the
world. It is Aengus that is hooked now and he will
travel through hollow lands and hilly lands to
discover where she went but she is never found, or, is
found many, many times.
Here is the big change. She is no longer the object of
desire, she is no longer a myth, she is real and he
will find her and kiss her real lips and take her real
hands and they together will enjoy the apples found in
the night and in the day. Both are real and they are
both delicious as he is delicious to her. He now knows
that his quest is ancient as he is ancient and that
the world is old and right and wonderful. There is no
sadness in his awareness or that his journey is
endless and repeated endlessly. He knows who he is and
he sees and knows the world and that is enough.
RHR
The song of Wandering Aengus by W.B.Yeats.
This is my favourite poem in the English language. I have tried
repeatedly to analyse the reasons of its appeal. This is as far as I
have got.
First, there is the sonorous lilt of the poetic phrase, but it is not
the only poem of my knowledge, that posseses such musicality. Then there
is the poignancy of unfulfilled love. We know Yeats is thinking of Maud
Gonne.
"Though I am old from wandering...
I will find out where she has gone."
Further, what strikes the visual mind so vividly are the images of
flickering,, flashing light and colour:
fire, white moths, stars, flickering out, silver, fire aflame,
glimmering, apple blossom, brightening, dappled, silver...moon,
golden...sun,
the mirror of the fire going on in Yeats' mind , reflected in the
reader's imagination.
Gérard Ducasse.
The first time that I heard of this poem was in a Ray Bradbury story
called 'The Golden Apples of the Sun', in which the protagonist quotes
the last two lines. I searched for and found the poem, and was
awestruck by its almost fairy-tale beauty. It also fits into Bradbury's
story well -- though at first sight the story has neither trouts nor
beautiful girls, but rockets and the Sun instead. In fact, come to
think of it, I think almost all of Bradbury's works have the same
Beauty that this poem has, and both Bradbury's stories and this poem
often remind me of each other.
AjitQ
This has always been one of my favorite poems--I remember reading it aloud in front of a class. It is even more powerful when read aloud. The images are all so vivid and perfect. Eudora Welty has a group of stories published together under the title of The golden Apples. They are all about a group of loosely connected people who live in a town in the Mississippi Delta and together form almost a novel. These are my favorite of her stories, and I find in them the same magical summery quality that is in the poem. Martha
hi,
yes i would agree with your comments; a rather more suitable interpretation
for moderm times. this poem is beautifyl it marks the begining of a love
relationship, base on true romance,hope and a happy ending. i truly enjoded reading
it.a peace of heaven wrap up in lyric form, and that no matter what we do as
human eartlings, we will always be on the quest of what true Love really is!
thanks1
In your comments about this poem you have rising the of keep on hoping on the
quest to true love!
That one day we will find it
When I first read this wonderful poem many years ago, I immediately flashed
to my first wife who had died so very young - this poem speaks to me of
eternal hope, love and the sure knowledge of an eternal existence somewhere,
somehow.
This is a song of a man who has lost his only love to death, yet cannot
accept that, and continues to search for her.
I know it well....
Cole W. Cordray, Lieutenant
Supervisor, Team 3
I have not been able to enter a comment on Yeat's "The Song of Wandering
Aengus." I shall try this way.
Aengus Og (or Angus or Oengus) is an Irish nature god (they had a
variety) -- one of the Tuatha de Danaan. In "The Crock O Gold" James
Stephens describes him this way:
The god was slender and as swift as the wind. His hair swung about his face
like golden blossoms. His eyes were mild and dancing and his lips smiled
with quiet sweetness. About his head there flew perpetually a ring of
singing birds, and when he spoke, his voice came sweetly from a center of
sweetness.... where he has kissed a bird has flown, where he has trod a
flower has sprung. Singing birds fly around his head at all times.
In another legend he dreams a maiden -- he calls her "Aeslinga" which means
"dream maiden" -- he comes to his mother and father and tells them that he
is sick for this love and begs them to find her for him and betroth her to
him. I have forgotten how this story ends, but it cannot be a happy ending.
aloha
owleyes
You are all correct. First heard in lyrics in song by Bud and Travis in the 60's, never listened to Miss Collins, by design. Took a class on Jung and discovered Yeats. Most beautiful thing written in English language.
My take - it's a man's poem. Dennis Banks said (I paraphrase), "When the leather broke my flesh and I bled [Sundance ceremony], I KNEW that all women were my sisters." Be man enough to bleed like us and you will find us.
The elusive feminine within a man, found only when becoming fully true to his man-ness. Jung's Anima, the Sun God and Moon Goddess - ETERNAL.
The most beautiful thing - he KNOWS!
I read through to the end, hoping to find someone who elucidated the
Jungian interpretation, which seems to fit perfectly with the original
myth, that the maiden is inner woman found in every man. Jung called it the
anima, for she is his soul-image, the yin to his yang. She seems to have
her origin in the personal mother and forever influences how a man sees and
interacts with the women in his life.
Susan C. Lawsonvoicecellfax
Wandering Aengus Mac Og
While lying asleep one evening Angus was visited by a fair maiden of the Faery named Caer Ibormeith. So taken with her beauty was he that when she disappeared as he woke he could think of no other, the thought of being without her caused him to fall ill, in essence... Love Sick.
Angus enlisted the help of Bodb and together they managed to track her to a Loch where she was living with 149 other maidens each in the form of a swan. Each Swan Maiden was bound by a silver chain, which as in all good tales could only be released by true love.
To gain her love Angus transformed himself into a Swan upon which the chain that held his love broke in two therefore freeing her. Reunited with Caer Ibormeith the lovers flew around Loch Bel Dracon three times singing a song so sweet all who heard it fell asleep for three days.
Angus is known in Celtic Lore as a God of Love and with his Swan Maiden they are said to have returned to Bruig na Boinne, otherwise known as New Grange.
Donovan recorded a stunningly beautiful (verbatim) version of this poem on his album HMS Donovan in the early '70s. That is where I first heard it.
The imagery is magically powerful. I am reading it in a ceremony of men as an expression of the longing, seeking, questing that characterizes many of our lives. The final lines are, I think, a marvelous statement of what it is that we seek and need: the fruit of both realms--the direct and the reflected, the masculine and the feminine, the tangible and the spirit.
Did I say? I LOVE this poem.
Joseph
I believe this as a dream of which love flows in wave that shows a
loving man in a trance of love. Wishing to find his soul mate his true
love appears. Vanishing from his sight he promises to find the woman of
his dreams. To be such a man he will probably find her once more and
fulfill his dream and become as one.
Andrea
So many hollows and hills occur and again I find myself drawn to this song. I notice it is mostly titled The Song of Wandering Aengus. Just a story about this guy "Angus." I had learned it as The Song of THE Wandering Aengus and told that AN Aengus was an old man. Can't find my book of Yeats but I do see both titles in a search. If "the" was there, why is it almost always dropped?
Anyway, he was going in the right direction when the fire burned (up there in his head) - into the dark - his unconscious - his soul (down there). And something did arise. His response was to turn up the fire and to consume it, to have it. Of course It being his other half, it became illusive once more and said "keep trying."
He does know that the golden apple will not consume the silver apple. He knows that he has grown old in the attempt to try again. He knows that it's eternal.
I think what was missing was a teacher (who was Bodb?). There was no mid-wife present to TELL him to breath and pay attention through the bleeding and suffering.
Really LOOK and you will find your other half. And most importantly: "You can do this!" Be so willing that you also become a chained-up swan, then you will be released and whole.
Sung most beautifully by Richie Havens on one of his "Mixed Bag" albums from
the '60s. By all means, try to listen to his version.
This poem is a love poem from Yeats to Maud Gonne, a woman that serves as his
muse for many other works. He is referring to how he is always chasing her,
but he will never catch her, and she will be just out of reach to him. The
reference to the apples is to the first time that Yeats met Gonne, there is no
mythological meaning to them, it is a personal memory of his.
I love this poem , why does it make me cry?
Wandering Aengus
In "Wandering Aengus" Yeats visits that magical place of super-consciousness
where earthly fish become fairies fairest, where everything is not only
possible, but probable. We readers ache because we too long to transcend the
boundaries of our human perception...or maybe we are remembering something lost?
I am reminded of two pieces of literature. The
first is The Da Vinci Code. The feminine/masculine
symbolism in this poem has been clearly pointed out in
previous comments, so I don't need to go into it. My
only addition is the added aspect of this whole poem
fitting very well into the Grail Quest, and with that
system of explanation the apples gain another meaning.
The second is Big Fish. I admit I have not read
the book, only seen the movie. It seems that the
story is an extended rendering of this poem; the poem
itself provides more insight into interpreting the
story than the other way around.
-L.
I read this poem this morning with my wife. Although it has been one of
our favorites for 40 years, I felt I understood it for the first time.
I had always wondered about the apples - what do they really symbolize.
Today I realized that they symbolize life itself: the nights and days of
our lives. The silver apples are our nights. The golden apples our
days. The speaker imagines that when he finally does find and kiss his
true love, he will live happily, "plucking" each night and each day, for
the rest of his life. I think there are many overtones suggested by
these images, but I now believe this is the plain root meaning of the
lines.
I am fortunate to have saved the 1962 LP of Cyril Cusack reading this
poem, and others by Yeats. Cusack, who worked with Yeats, is
magnificent.
Throughout his poetry, Yeats works with the inescapable polarities
that define the arena of our lives. One of those is the gap created
by our ability to imagine perfection, to dream and see visions, to
step into a world of archetypes and images, to imagine a life better
than we know -- and the ordinariness of the preoccupations of
everyday life.
We suffer when that imagined perfection makes the ordinary seem
desolate. We also suffer when the ordinary displaces our dreams. Each
negates the other; it is our task to make each support the other. And
it is a task we can never finish.
There is no escape from wandering between the "floor" we "stoop to"
and the Golden and Silver Apples. To take either alternative
exclusively is a form of death in life -- the cold purity of the monk
or the underwater-swimming busyness of the theater manager.
In Among School Children, this frenzy takes the form of a girl
putting on "burdensome beauty," to be haunted thereafter by the
addictive perfection men see in her, and that, indeed, takes her over
-- for a while.
The Wild Old Wicked Man repudiates the quest for perfection,
enthusiastically embracing the contradictions of our nature. But does
he resolve the oppositions? I think they are with us always, and we
can be torn by their opposing pulls or kind to ourselves and others.
We do not escape them; they are created by the nature of our mind.
Comedy handles these oppositions best, by honoring their unresolvable
inevitability, yet showing us how to feel our dilemmas deeply, laugh
at ourselves, and go on living. Don Quixote. Twelfth Night.
Chaplin's City Lights.
--Gerald
this poem is the earth, the air. it is fire, it is water. it is moon and sun.
it is you and I
and it is love. (and i wish I had written it)
t
i have just discovered the donovan rendering of "the song of wandering
aengus"
it is very beautiful, very very beautiful. he phrases those astonishing lines
with
sensitivity and power and takes me in my mind to an early dawn morning
where it is I that threads the berry to catch the little silver trout.
regards
t
Also known as "Angus the young", he was considered the Irish god of love. He was a young handsome god that had four birds flying about his head -- some say they symbolize kisses -- who inspired love in all who heard them. He was the son of Dagda and Boann ('the wife of Elcmar').
Once, Aengus was troubled by the dream of a young maiden, He instantly fell in love with her and became love sick. He told his mother Boann and she searched the whole of Ireland for the maiden, but after a year she still had not found the maiden. Then Dagda was called and he searched Ireland for a year, and still did not find the maiden. Finally Bov the Red, king of the Dananns in Munster and Dagda's aide, was called to search and after a year he found the maiden.
Aengus was taken to the lake of the Dragon's Mouth, and there he saw 150 maidens all chained with gold into pairs. He spied her at once and her name was Caer, the daughter of Ethal and Anubal, a prince of the Dananns of Connact. On November first she and all the other maidens are transformed into swans for a year. He was told if he could identify her as a swan he could marry her. On November 1 Aengus went out to the lake and called to his love, and once he had found her he then turned in to a swan himself and joined her. They flew off together singing such a beautiful song that all who heard them fell asleep for three days and nights.
Aengus had a son called, "Diarmuid Ua Duibhne" or Diarmuid of the Love Spot. One night while hunting Diarmuid met a maiden who made a magic love spot appear on his head, and from then on no woman ever looked upon him with out falling in love with him.
I only have "beautiful" written by this poem in an old college textbook. No other notes. For me, this morning, I like to think of that little silver trout become glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair as a part of oneself that one is handed. On your way to one place, you are directed to another. Some part of yourself calls your name, and what you thought was your prize was really just a prologue to a life-changing event. The real prize. A prize that you will never let go of, even though it is elusive.
I love Yeats use of apples. Apple blossoms in her hair leading to "I will . pluck till time and times are done/ The silver apples of the moon,/ The golden apples of the sun."
All this "because a fire was in my head."
I was right all those years ago: it's a beautiful poem.
Susan
This may help, from Yeats' himself, from his preface to Lady Gregory's "Gods
and Fighting Men":
---
Old writers had an admirable symbolism that attributed certain energies to
the influence of the sun, and certain others to the lunar influence. To
lunar influence belong all thoughts and emotions that were created by the
community, by the common people, by nobody knows who, and to the sun all
that came from the high disciplined or individual kingly mind. I myself
imagine a marriage of the sun and moon in the arts I take most pleasure in;
and now bride and bridegroom but exchange, as it were, full cups of gold and
silver, and now they are one in a mystical embrace. From the moon come the
folk-songs imagined by reapers and spinners out of the common impulse of
their labour, and made not by putting words together, but by mixing verses
and phrases, and the folk-tales made by the capricious mixing of incidents
known to everybody in new ways, as we deal out cards, never getting the same
hand twice over. When we hear some fine story, we never know whether it has
not been hazard that put the last touch of adventure. Such poetry, as it
seems to me, desires an infinity of wonder or emotion, for where there is no
individual mind there is no measurer-out, no marker-in of limits. The poor
fisher has no possession of the world and no responsibility for it; and if
he dreams of a love-gift better than the brown shawl that seems too common
for poetry, why should he not dream of a glove made from the skin of a bird,
or shoes made from the skin of a fish, or a coat made from the glittering
garment of the salmon? Was it not Aeschylus who said he but served up dishes
from the banquet of Homer?--but Homer himself found the great banquet on an
earthen floor and under a broken roof. We do not know who at the foundation
of the world made the banquet for the first time, or who put the pack of
cards into rough hands; but we do know that, unless those that have made
many inventions are about to change the nature of poetry, we may have to go
where Homer went if we are to sing a new song. Is it because all that is
under the moon thirsts to escape out of bounds, to lose itself in some
unbounded tidal stream, that the songs of the folk are mournful, and that
the story of the Fianna, whenever the queens lament for their lovers,
reminds us of Songs that are still sung in country places? Their grief, even
when it is to be brief like Grania's, goes up into the waste places of the
sky. But in supreme art or in supreme life there is the influence of the sun
too, and the sun brings with it, as old writers tell us, not merely
discipline but joy; for its discipline is not of the kind the multitudes
impose upon us by their weight and pressure, but the expression of the
individual soul turning itself into a pure fire and imposing its own
pattern, its own music, upon the heaviness and the dumbness that is in
others and in itself. When we have drunk the cold cup of the moon's
intoxication, we thirst for something beyond ourselves, and the mind flows
outward to a natural immensity; but if we have drunk from the hot cup of the
sun, our own fullness awakens, we desire little, for wherever we go our
heart goes too; and if any ask what music is the sweetest, we can but
answer, as Finn answered, 'what happens'. And yet the songs and stories that
have come from either influence are a part, neither less than the other, of
the pleasure that is the bride-bed of poetry.
-W.B.Yeats
Ten years ago I remember hearing the songs of Robert James Waller
singing the songs on his album "The Bridges of Madison County" and
hearing him recite the poem of Yeats. It caused me to read the works of
Yeats and read this poem in particular. I've read the comments of
everyone on this site. So much truth in what everyone says about the
poem. The poem in fact has the ability to please many a mind. I live
in Tennessee and have actually met old timers who've been a little
intoxicated and talked about cutting and peeling a hazel stick and using
it to do magic things. Isn't there a type of mermaid quality of the
trout too? The "glimmering girl" transformation and the vow to pursue
that "dream" after she has magically faded through the brightening air
combines magic, romance/sex, journeying and aspiration; the wonderful
imagery, musical sounds of the syllables that reflect the image itself;
the transfixing of the old spiriting man and the "glimmering girl"-I
never tire of hearing or reciting the words-there is always something
inexplicable and that's why it's so good-fascinating, always something
else outside it....
Let Yeats help in his own words, from Yeats' Preface to Lady Gregory's "Gods
and Fighting Men":
Old writers had an admirable symbolism that attributed certain energies to
the influence of the sun, and certain others to the lunar influence. To
lunar influence belong all thoughts and emotions that were created by the
community, by the common people, by nobody knows who, and to the sun all
that came from the high disciplined or individual kingly mind. I myself
imagine a marriage of the sun and moon in the arts I take most pleasure in;
and now bride and bridegroom but exchange, as it were, full cups of gold and
silver, and now they are one in a mystical embrace.
...
When we have drunk the cold cup of the moon's intoxication, we thirst for
something beyond ourselves, and the mind flows outward to a natural
immensity; but if we have drunk from the hot cup of the sun, our own
fullness awakens, we desire little, for wherever we go our heart goes too;
and if any ask what music is the sweetest, we can but answer, as Finn
answered, 'what happens'. And yet the songs and stories that have come from
either influence are a part, neither less than the other, of the pleasure
that is the bride-bed of poetry.
[broken link] http://www.duinocastle.com/library/yeats/gods_and_fighting_men_preface.asp
<[broken link] http://www.duinocastle.com/library/yeats/gods_and_fighting_men_preface.asp>
-Sean
[broken link] http://www.duinocastle.com/library/index.asp
<[broken link] http://www.duinocastle.com/library/index.asp>
I wish only to add what is not already here -- that Ms. Jean Redpath, of Scotland, recorded a very beautiful sung version of this exquisite poem on her album, "A Fine Song for Singing" [Philo CD PH-1110], and that all of the other poems sung on that album are beautiful as well, and haunting as well, especially in her gorgeous rich alto voice.
- Bill Lloyd
Nothing I could add is comparable to the quality of this piece.
From: James McFarlane <plover3@>
One of the comments above suggests that Yeats was thinking of Maud Gonne when he wrote this poem, which reminds me that some asked her (Maud) why she had refused to marry Yeats and make him happy, to which she replied that if she had, he would never have written what he did; that from his un-happiness, his unfulfilled longing, had come all his greatest work. A very perceptive chiel.
This is an excellent poem. And perhaps a source for the song 'A Forest' by
The Cure. The lyrics seem to tell a remarkably similar story to the poem. The
lyrics are below:
Come closer and see
See into the trees
Find the girl
While you can
Come closer and see
See into the dark
Just follow your eyes
Just follow your eyes
I hear her voice
Calling my name
The sound is deep
In the dark
I hear her voice
And start to run
Into the trees
Into the trees
Into the trees
Suddenly I stop
But I know it's too late
I'm lost in a forest
All alone
The girl was never there
It's always the same
I'm running towards nothing
Again and again and again
By the way, Morton Subotnik wrote a piece titled Silver Apples of the
Moon back in 1967 ... one of the earliest synthesized works, I believe,
and certainly as haunting as Yeat's poem.
I have the distinct pleasure to present the poem in song in a few days.
Wanting to hear some other ideas, I read this column of kenners of the poem.
I am old and relate to the last stanza well. I also think of the Faust
legend - constant striving, not the attaining, is the key to life. Perhaps
Aengus' striving is the key, whether he "attains" the girl or not.
I also think of the poem set by Schubert of Die Forelle. Again, man is
trying to trick the trout, the elusive trout. Only by deception is he
successful.
TRK
Hello, we're in class.
Just wanted to let you know that we thought this was a pretty awesome poem and such.
Thanks.
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I'm supposed to teach this poem as an introduction to a unit on survival in the wild. After we read novels on this theme we're suppose to revisit this poem and discuss it again. However, this poem doesn't seem like a survival in the wild kind of poem. Does anyone have suggestions of another poem that might be more appropriate?
This was a pretty awesome poem.
Thanks for give me some inspiration :)
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This is the perfect blog for anyone who wants to know about this topic. You know so much its almost hard to argue with you (not that I really would want...HaHa). You definitely put a new spin on a subject thats been written about for years. Great stuff, just great! Centro Metro
Just for anyone who finds this thread, my first exposure to this lovely poem was the wonderful musical version composed by Bill Douglas. I have not heard the other versions mentioned here, but Bill's version is simply beautiful. You can hear a snippet here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000X68/billdouglascc
His other music is beautiful too. I have actually discovered some more lovely poems through his musical arrangements.
Mike Scott of the Waterboys put 14 poems to music in their album An Appointment wth Mr. Yeats.
The Song of Wandering Aengus is one of my favourite.
The music is One with the poem.
Just check for your self.
Wim
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