Brown Penny -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem submitted by Jessica K. Schnell:

(Poem #1963) Brown Penny I whispered, "I am too young," And then, "I am old enough"; Wherefore I threw a penny To find out if I might love. "Go and love, go and love, young man, If the lady be young and fair." Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, I am looped in the loops of her hair. O love is the crooked thing, There is nobody wise enough To find out all that is in it, For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon. Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, One cannot begin it too soon. -- William Butler Yeats

This little poem was recited by Christopher Plummer in the 2005 motion
picture  "Must Love Dogs," and a part of the reason for my submitting
this particular selection.  It seems all too rare that poems are found
in modern culture, and always a wonderful surprise when quoted in films
(another popular W. B. Yeats one is Poem #597).  And, as always, I
delight in poems that encourage one to carpe diem and be run away with
love.

Jessica.

A Deep-Sworn Vow -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem sent in by Kamalika Chowdhury

(Poem #1950) A Deep-Sworn Vow Others because you did not keep That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine; Yet always when I look death in the face, When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, Suddenly I meet your face. -- William Butler Yeats

This poem - taken from The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) - showcases the
maturity of Yeats' later work, and his distinctive brand of genius. With a
master conjurer's dexterity, Yeats tells a story in a six simple lines that
become breathtaking when put together.

Trying to express my thoughts on this poem leaves me feeling absolutely
inadequate, but I cannot let it go without a salute. So here it is.

The call of these few compelling lines is powerful and intimate, utterly
human and almost sacred. The reader is directly drawn into a deep
relationship with the narrator, yet one that is infused with the guilt of
having broken "that deep-sworn vow". But before one can fully assimilate the
impact, one is quietly brought face-to-face with the inescapable truth of
the final line. The inherent loneliness in this poem is ignored - it does
not rave or rant, or cry out. It simply is. The two aspects of this
relationship are not meant to be reconciled.

And because its soul-searing intensity must have came from the poet's
innermost being, I like to think that he remains immortal in this poem.

Kamalika

The Wild Swans at Coole -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem sent in by Radhika Gowaikar

(Poem #1939) The Wild Swans at Coole The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine and fifty swans. The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count; I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings Upon their clamorous wings. I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore. All's changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread. Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold, Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. But now they drift on the still water Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build, By what lake's edge or pool Delight men's eyes, when I awake some day To find they have flown away? -- William Butler Yeats

I am surprised that we haven't run this before. I think the line, "And
scatter wheeling in great broken rings" is what does it for me. It is as if
Yeats is part of the picture with the swans and yet remains a mere onlooker.
The line describes the image in my mind perfectly.

The idea of returning to a place time after time and contrasting the changes
in oneself with the (apparent) constancy of the surroundings is not exactly
novel. But this poem does it justice. Perhaps the popularity of the idea
stems the fact that we are all practitioners of it, though not always
consciously.

--
radhika.

Notes:

1. Coole Park and Gardens are understandably pround of their connection to
Yeats.
  http://www.coolepark.ie/

2. I am also reminded of this poem/song
  http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=8272
Men reminiscing by the water.

A Drinking Song -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem submitted by Janice:

(Poem #1811) A Drinking Song Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh. -- William Butler Yeats

I was going through the Yeats collection on Minstrels and noticed that this
wasn't part of it. "A Drinking Song" has been one of my favourite poems for
years. It captures, at least I feel it does, the sweet, underlying sadness
that runs through a large number of his poems ("The Song of Wandering
Aengus", "He Gives his Beloved Certain Rhymes", "Cloths of Heaven", "Adam's
Curse" and many more), this sense of great loss and longing, of something
that remains just out of reach. I love the simplicity of these lines, their
poignancy, the inbuilt harshness of 'before we grow old and die' and the
soft despair of 'I look at you, and I sigh'. And though the title evokes a
celebration, it's a song mingled with sorrow. Probably the best kind.

Hope you enjoy the poem,
Janice.

Aedh Laments the Loss of Love -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem sent in by Kamalika Chowdhury

(Poem #1668) Aedh Laments the Loss of Love (or The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love) Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, I had a beautiful friend And dreamed that the old despair Would end in love in the end: She looked in my heart one day And saw your image was there; She has gone weeping away. -- William Butler Yeats

On reading the recent Yeats poem (Poem #1657 - "The Rose of the World"), I
was reminded that the minstrels does not yet have two of my favourite poems
by Yeats.  This gem of a poem, from "The Wind Among the Reeds" (1899), is
one of them.

The poignancy of loss of love has seldom been better expressed in the
English language. Yet the spell of this poem goes beyond that perfect
execution, and into the intriguingly complex play of time and emotion
captured in these few short, heart-stopping lines. No words are wasted here.
Even as the gentle, patient cadence of the opening lines sets the scene, the
powerful simplicity of the final image brings a sudden and immense sense of
permanence. In the end one is left with a picture far wider than the title
promised. Which was the real loss? Whence the haunting despair, and how deep
love's lament? Beautiful.

Kamalika

[Martin adds]

I also love the way the closing "she has gone weeping away" plays against the
incompleteness of the "missing" eighth line. The poem ends on a brief,
expectant  pause, a held breath, perhaps a hope that this is not then end of
the story. And then the realisation that the poem has indeed come to an end
surges back, and the reader is almost compelled to silently reread the last
line, both to lay to rest the feeling that the poem should continue a line
more, and by the very repetition perhaps to supply that closure. (And yet, in
the end, I am unable to read finality into the last line; the more I look at
it, the more I feel the promise of a second chance. And that, too, is perhaps
as it should be.)

martin

The Rose of the World -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem sent in by Aseem

(Poem #1656) The Rose of the World Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died. We and the labouring world are passing by: Amid men's souls, that waver and give place Like the pale waters in their wintry race, Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, Lives on this lonely face. Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode: Before you were, or any hearts to beat, Weary and kind one lingered by His seat; He made the world to be a grassy road Before her wandering feet. -- William Butler Yeats

I was reading Yeats on Minstrels in honour of St. Patrick's day and realised
to my horror that the thirty or so poems of his on Minstrels did not include
one of my personal favourites - this one.

This is, quite simply, a beautiful poem. For starters, it's a wonderfully
melodic poem - with a soft cadence to the words and an intriguing rhyme
pattern (abba followed by that breathtaking shortened b again). Then there's
the vividness of the images - the crimson fire of the first stanza, the
gently rippling wake of the second and the verdant green of the third - and
the way that they mirror so perfectly the three stages of the poet's
emotion: the passion of the first stanza, the uncertainty and restlessness
of the second, the surrender of the third (elsewhere (Poem #597) Yeats
writes "I have spread my dreams under your feet / Tread softly, because you
tread on my dreams" - it's hard to read the last lines of this poem without
thinking of those lines).

But what makes this poem truly unforgettable for me is the question that it
opens with. It's an incredible first line; not just because it's so
memorable and sticks in your head forever, but because it sets the tone so
beautifully for what is to follow - the dreaminess, the sadness, the sense
of defeat, the sense of acceptance.

Aseem

[Links]

 For reference to Usna's children, see the story of Dierdre of
Sorrows:
http://www.irishmythology.com/Irish_Mythology_Conor_&_Deirdre_Page_2.htm

A Cradle Song -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem submitted by Vivek Nallur :

(Poem #1633) A Cradle Song The angels are stooping Above your bed; They weary of trooping With the whimpering dead. God's laughing in Heaven To see you so good; The Sailing Seven are gay with His mood. I sigh that kiss you, For I must own That I shall miss you When you have grown. -- William Butler Yeats

After the last few (mostly) sombre poems, here's another one on yearning,
yet a lot more cheerful. Anyone who's seen a little one grow up will
identify with the feeling of sweet loss when the child lets go of one's
finger and walks on its own.

There's a more than adequate bio of Yeats with Poem #32.

Vivek.

Two Songs Of A Fool -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem submitted by Deepak Srinivasan:

(Poem #1599) Two Songs Of A Fool I A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there; And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence. I start out of my sleep to think Some day I may forget Their food and drink; Or, the house door left unshut, The hare may run till it's found The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound. I bear a burden that might well try Men that do all by rule, And what can I That am a wandering-witted fool But pray to God that He ease My great responsibilities? II I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire. The speckled cat slept on my knee; We never thought to enquire Where the brown hare might be, And whether the door were shut. Who knows how she drank the wind Stretched up on two legs from the mat, Before she had settled her mind To drum with her heel and to leap? Had I but awakened from sleep And called her name, she had heard. It may be, and had not stirred, That now, it may be, has found The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound. -- William Butler Yeats

When I read this poem in my wanderings I was struck by a strange unease on
reading it. For whatever reason, this poem has dark elements in it. Song I,
I think, tells a tale of fatalism and acceptance of what the future may
hold. It is one that would probably be a folk tale. There is little of edge
in it. And suddenly in song II we are drawn into the world where risks have
fearful consequences. A more real world and not so idyllic as the first.
"drinking the wind" - isn't that what people who live on the edge do? Those
who are in strange alleys in the night, or those who are fighting a war
below the radar of the common man? I don't know. There is some magnetism
about it, and, of course among the two animals which else but the hare would
be drawn to it. Not the quiet, cautious, cunning cat!! Maybe I am reading
too much into it and perhaps there are better interpretations to be sure. I
just get the feeling that I am on the brink peering into a Lord of the Rings
trilogy that, it seems, few cultures evoke as effectively as those of the
islands off the continent. Not only does this poem stir up strange feelings
and hint at forgotten experiences, but also does so with a cadence and rhyme
that makes it roll off the tongue so easily. How much more can one ask for?

Deepak.

On Those that Hated the 'Playboy of the Western World', 1907 -- William Butler Yeats

A nice follow-up to yesterday's piece:

(Poem #1520) On Those that Hated the 'Playboy of the Western World', 1907 Once, when midnight smote the air, Eunuchs ran through Hell and met From thoroughfare to thoroughfare, While that great Juan galloped by; And like these to rail and sweat Staring upon his sinewy thigh. -- William Butler Yeats

Yeats was never overly fond of critics, and it shows in quite a few of his
poems. (See, for instance, "The Scholars", Minstrels Poem #1482). And when
some misbegotten reviewers had the temerity to criticise his friend J. M.
Synge, this was Yeats' marvellous (and vicious) rejoinder -- a fitting
addition to our "The Poet Cranky" theme.

thomas.

The Scholars -- William Butler Yeats

My thanks to Tom Richards for suggesting today's poem:

(Poem #1482) The Scholars Bald heads, forgetful of their sins, Old, learned, respectable bald heads Edit and annotate the lines That young men, tossing on their beds, Rhymed out in love's despair To flatter beauty's ignorant ear. All shuffle there, all cough in ink; All wear the carpet with their shoes; All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbour knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk their way? -- William Butler Yeats

In "Letter From Lesbia" (Minstrels Poem #1467), Dorothy Parker pokes
gentle fun at the self-absorption of the poet. But if a poet is
self-absorbed and (hence) uninteresting, what does that make the critic
who spends his days analyzing his poems?

thomas.

PS. Tom writes that he found this poem in "Poem for the Day: 366 poems,
old and new, worth learning by heart", ed. Nicholas Albery; he further
comments that "it's only trumped by The Rattle Bag out of the poetry
anthologies I've read". With that strong a recommendation I'll
definitely have to keep an eye out for it; thanks again, Tom!

[Minstrels Links]

The Catullus theme:
Poem #1463, Song Five -- Gaius Valerius Catullus
Poem #1464, From Catullus 5 -- Sir Walter Raleigh
Poem #1465, Come, My Celia -- Ben Jonson
Poem #1466, My Sweetest Lesbia -- Thomas Campion
Poem #1467, From A Letter From Lesbia -- Dorothy Parker

[Administrivia]

Earlier in the day you may have received a suspicious email titled
"Notify about using the e-mail account", or some such phrase. This was a
fake, sent by someone (or something) who had forged Sitaram's email
address. Fortunately, we've configured our list-serve to strip out all
attachments, which means that no harm was done, and that you, Gentle
Reader, needn't worry about viruses and the like.

Among School Children -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem sent in by Lucy Garrett

(Poem #1441) Among School Children I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading - books and histories, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way - the children's eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling public man. II I dream of a Ledaean body, bent Above a sinking fire, a tale that she Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event That changed some childish day to tragedy - Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent Into a sphere from youthful sympathy, Or else, to alter Plato's parable, Into the yolk and white of the one shell. III And thinking of that fit of grief or rage I look upon one child or t'other there And wonder if she stood so at that age - For even daughters of the swan can share Something of every paddler's heritage - And had that colour upon cheek or hair, And thereupon my heart is driven wild: She stands before me as a living child. IV Her present image floats into the mind - Did Quattrocento finger fashion it Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind And took a mess of shadows for its meat? And I though never of Ledaean kind Had pretty plumage once - enough of that, Better to smile on all that smile, and show There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow. V What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap Honey of generation had betrayed, And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape As recollection or the drug decide, Would think her Son, did she but see that shape With sixty or more winters on its head, A compensation for the pang of his birth, Or the uncertainty of his setting forth? VI Plato thought nature but a spume that plays Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; Solider Aristotle played the taws Upon the bottom of a king of kings; World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings What a star sang and careless Muses heard: Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird. VII Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother's reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose. And yet they too break hearts - O presences That passion, piety or affection knows, And that all heavenly glory symbolise - O self-born mockers of man's enterprise; VIII Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul. Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? -- William Butler Yeats

Saturday's poem by Harindranath Chattopadhyaya [Poem #1438] reminded me of
Yeats' poem Among School Children, which by some terrible omission you don't
yet seem to have on the archive.  The poems both deal with the relation
between the creator and the creation.

This is quintessential Yeats: dense, allusive, intense and erotic; obsessed
with death, desire, age, religion and art.  It's wonderful stuff.  Read it
out loud and feel the hairs rise on the back of your neck.

Some notes on the text might be helpful:

Verse 2:
"a Laedean body" : see also Leda and The Swan & No Second Troy (both on
Minstrels).  Yeats is referring to the love of his life, Maud Gonne (mostly
unrequited).  In many of his poems she appears as a figure from Greek
mythology (as well as being as beautiful as Leda, whom Zeus loved in the
form of a swan, she is also often likened to Helen of Troy because she is
fierce and warriorlike).  See also the completely gorgeous poem: "He Wishes
For the Cloths of Heaven."  How did the girl resist?

"Plato's parable" and "natures blent / into a sphere from youthful
sympathy":  Plato said that everyone on earth before birth formed part of a
sphere.  At birth we are split in half and we spend the rest of our life
searching  to find our mate - the other half of the sphere.  In some cases
the whole was female, in other cases male, in other cases half and half.
Hence he explained homosexuality and heterosexuality.  Sweet, no?  It's
commonly thought that he might not have put this theory forward totally
seriously...

Verse 3:
"daughters of the swan": see Leda and the Swan again.  Yeats is finessing
the likeness to Leda - she looks like one of Leda's daughters.  See the poem
for the rather passionate circs of the conception.

The remainder of the poem contrasts human life with art, philosophy and
religion.  It sets up a contrast (often seen in Yeats' poetry) between the
permanence yet hollowness of art ("old clothes upon old sticks to scare a
bird") and the often disappointed/frustrated mortality of man's life (I am
particularly keen on the notion of a baby as a shape that the "honey of
generation" has betrayed into life and which the young mother wouldn't think
worth the trouble of giving birth to, were she to see him with 60 winters on
his head.  Please also note that the 60 winters is a reference back to Yeats
himself in the 1st verse - Yeats is counting himself among those not worth
giving birth to).  Also interesting to note the capitalised "Son" - allusion
to religion.

Verse 7  asserts that art is triumphant over life - it mocks life in its
perfection and breaks hearts.  Don't you love the line "But keep a marble or
a bronze repose"?

Verse 8 is the answer to all the above.  It creates a triumphant synergy
between art and its creation - man in the act of creation is drawn into the
immortality of the creation and the creation, although pure and perfect,
must depend on the man.  The process is natural and entirely unforced.
Therefore the two are one and interdependent.  Also absolutely glorious
poetry:  "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, / How can we know
the dancer from the dance?"

This theme of the interdependence of man and art and the power of art to
transfigure mortality is explored in many of Yeats' poems.  I recommend
Lapis Lazuli, Sailing to Byzantium and Byzantium in particular, as some of
the greatest poetry ever written as well as sophisticated analyses of this
dichotomy.  See also Proust's A La Recherche de Temps Perdu for the world's
longest ever discussion on the point.

Love to all,

Lucy Garrett

The Stare's Nest by My Window -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem sent in by Matt Chanoff

(Poem #1144) The Stare's Nest by My Window The bees build in the crevices Of loosening masonry, and there The mother birds bring grubs and flies. My wall is loosening; honey-bees, Come build in the empty house of the stare. We are closed in, and the key is turned On our uncertainty; somewhere A man is killed, or a house burned. Yet no clear fact to be discerned: Come build in the empty house of the stare. A barricade of stone or of wood; Some fourteen days of civil war: Last night they trundled down the road That dead young soldier in his blood: Come build in the empty house of the stare. We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love; O honey-bees, Come build in the empty house of the stare. -- William Butler Yeats

           ("Meditations in Time of Civil War - VI", 1928)

Note:
  stare: starling

The build-up of US troops facing Iraq seems ready to boil over into war,
sometime around Valentine's day.  I was thinking about love and war, and
came across this Yeats, which seems brilliantly about both.  The thing this
poem does for me is not to compare love and war (passion, intensity,
uncertainty, etc.) and not to contrast them either (intimacy vs distance,
hope vs dread etc). Rather, it talks about both in the same terms, meaning
different things by the terms. Look at the second stanza. The text there is
war, but the subtext is love going wrong. Then look at the last stanza.
There, the text is love and the subtext war.

I don't understand the central metaphor. I thought at first that the house
of the stare (starling) had been vacated, and then the bees moved in, and I
was wondering if Yeats was thinking of the bees in terms of their honey or
in terms of their stings, or maybe their military-like organization.  But
the mother birds "bring" grubs and flies, so why is the house empty? And why
are there multiple mothers? Don't know.  Maybe the point isn't so much about
the birds vs bees, but about the collapse of the masonry which lets both in,
and echoes with the barricade in stanza 3.

Anyway, the last stanza is just haunting, and I thought deserved a place on
Minstrels even though Yeats is so well represented already.

Matt

On Being Asked for a War Poem -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem sent in by Suresh Ramasubramanian

(Poem #1040) On Being Asked for a War Poem I think it better that in times like these A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth We have no gift to set a statesman right; He has had enough of meddling who can please A young girl in the indolence of her youth, Or an old man upon a winter's night. -- William Butler Yeats

Yeats wrote this little beauty on being asked to come up with "a war poem"
in 1919 - part of his anthology "The Wild Swans at Coole".

I _really_ like it.  Short, to the point, and wonderfully sarcastic.
There is no point at all to war, Yeats seems to say, and still less
point in writing long paeans to the glorious heroes of Britain,
conquerors of the Hun.  Beyond this, the poem speaks for itself, I think.

--srs

A Prayer For My Daughter -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem submitted by Priya Chakravarthi:

(Poem #1020) A Prayer For My Daughter Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle But Gregory's wood and one bare hill Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind, Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed; And for an hour I have walked and prayed Because of the great gloom that is in my mind. I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower, And under the arches of the bridge, and scream In the elms above the flooded stream; Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea. May she be granted beauty and yet not Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught, Or hers before a looking-glass, for such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend. Helen being chosen found life flat and dull And later had much trouble from a fool, While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray, Being fatherless could have her way Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man. It's certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone. In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned; Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned By those that are not entirely beautiful; Yet many, that have played the fool For beauty's very self, has charm made wise, And many a poor man that has roved, Loved and thought himself beloved, From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes. May she become a flourishing hidden tree That all her thoughts may like the linnet be, And have no business but dispensing round Their magnanimities of sound, Nor but in merriment begin a chase, Nor but in merriment a quarrel. O may she live like some green laurel Rooted in one dear perpetual place. My mind, because the minds that I have loved, The sort of beauty that I have approved, Prosper but little, has dried up of late, Yet knows that to be choked with hate May well be of all evil chances chief. If there's no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf. An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind? Considering that, all hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will; She can, though every face should scowl And every windy quarter howl Or every bellows burst, be happy still. And may her bridegroom bring her to a house Where all's accustomed, ceremonious; For arrogance and hatred are the wares Peddled in the thoroughfares. How but in custom and in ceremony Are innocence and beauty born? Ceremony's a name for the rich horn, And custom for the spreading laurel tree. -- William Butler Yeats

I was taught this poem in school and it remains one of my favourites.
Despite the seeming simplicity of its theme the poem has a deep political
undercurrent and Yeats' trademark cynicism.

Yeats was deeply involved in Irish politics, particularly the struggle for
freedom from England. His verse, even after Ireland's independence,
reflected pessimism about the political situation in his country and the
rest of Europe. In fact the howling storm with which the poem opens refers
to the gathering clouds in Ireland's political scene. In the course of his
political activities Yeats met an extremely beautiful rebel called Maud
Gonne and was influenced by her strength of character and political ideas.
Maud however chose to marry a man who Yeats considered to be an intellectual
pygmy. The "old bellows full of angry wind" is a scathing reference to this
man and the part about Helen and Venus is meant to refer to Maud. The
daughter in this poem is the product of his marriage with Georgie Hyde Lees
who was said to be rather plain.

So much of the ability to appreciate poetry depends on how it was taught in
one's formative years. When I learnt this poem in school I remember the
teacher analyzing every line and explaining the allegory to Irish folklore
in great detail.

Priya.

[Moreover]

"We all of us have or ought to have a group of poems we admire greatly but
dislike. There is so much high art in 'A Prayer for My Daughter', admirably
set forth by the Yeatsians, that the poem compels great respect. 'Under Ben
Bulben', and some other famous poems by Yeats, will be seen someday as
structures of cant and rant, but 'A Prayer for My Daughter" has the
ritualistic strength of Spenser at his strongest, no matter what it is that
here informs the ritualism. As a wholly coherent work, it disarms formalist
criticism, and further possesses an excellence rarely attained by any poem
of celebration, by providing an epitome of the values it praises and
desires. In its eighty lines we are given a complete map of Yeats' social
mind, at least of that mind in the act of idealization."

        -- Harold Bloom, "Yeats"

Bloom, for once, gets it absolutely right. I cannot bring myself to
sympathize with the social and moral philosophy this poem seems to espouse,
but I have to admit that it's beautifully written: Yeats at his fascinating
best.

thomas.

Easter, 1916 -- William Butler Yeats

(Poem #1011) Easter, 1916 I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a mocking tale or a gibe To please a companion Around the fire at the club, Being certain that they and I But lived where motley is worn: All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. That woman's days were spent In ignorant good will, Her nights in argument Until her voice grew shrill. What voice more sweet than hers When young and beautiful, She rode to harriers? This man had kept a school And rode our winged horse. This other his helper and friend Was coming into his force; He might have won fame in the end, So sensitive his nature seemed, So daring and sweet his thought. This other man I had dreamed A drunken, vain-glorious lout. He had done most bitter wrong To some who are near my heart, Yet I number him in the song; He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; He, too, has been changed in his turn, Transformed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream. The horse that comes from the road. The rider, the birds that range From cloud to tumbling cloud, Minute by minute change; A shadow of cloud on the stream Changes minute by minute; A horse-hoof slides on the brim, And a horse plashes within it Where long-legged moor-hens dive, And hens to moor-cocks call. Minute by minute they live: The stone's in the midst of all. Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? That is heaven's part, our part To murmur name upon name, As a mother names her child When sleep at last has come On limbs that had run wild. What is it but nightfall? No, no, not night but death; Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith For all that is done and said. We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead. And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? I write it out in a verse -- MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. -- William Butler Yeats

[Historical Note]

"[This poem] celebrates the Easter Rising of 1916, in which a group of Irish
insurgents captured the General Post Office in Dublin and held out for
several days before surrendering. Sixteen of them, including the two
leaders, Pearse and Connolly, were executed. Yeats was clearly fascinated
and at the same time troubled by this heroic and yet in some ways pointless
sacrifice. He later returned to the theme in poem after poem."
        -- George MacBeth, "Poetry 1900 to 1975"

[Commentary]

Great Poets (tm) have (indeed, are defined by) an ability to find the
universal in the specific, to seize upon particular incidents and use them
to explore and illuminate the human condition. So what sets Yeats apart? And
what explains the lasting power of such highly topical poems as "Easter
1916", which one might expect to contain little or no relevance to modern
readers?

The answer, gentle reader, lies not in the specifics, nor even in the
universalizations drawn therefrom, but in the language used to handle both
of these. Yeats has, and has always had, a majestic command of form, a
subtle yet powerful control of word and phrase that seems effortless because
it is so absolute. Michael Schmidt, in his magisterial study 'he Lives of
the Poets' puts it thus: "This is not the huge competence of Auden, at play
in the toy shop of poetic form, but _mastery_, the possession of a unique
rhetoric for use on a real but limited range of themes".

"Real but limited" is a fair assessment of Yeats' poetic materiel, but
that's not necessarily a criticism. Here's George MacBeth again: "Irish
politics and Irish history came alive to Yeats through the doings of people
he know and loved. His best work is a commentary on the history of a whole
country at the establishment of its freedom, a period of agonising crisis
sees through the eyes of a particularly sensitive and involved member of it.
Ireland  was still small enough in the early twentieth century for one man
to feel its problems personally and would great peotry out of them. No
English poet has been able during the last fifty or sixty years to do this
for more than one particular region. This more than anything else
establishes Yeats' pre-eminence".

thomas.

[Links]

William Butler Yeats on the Minstrels:
Poem #1, The Song of Wandering Aengus
Poem #21, Sailing to Byzantium
Poem #32, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
Poem #60, Byzantium
Poem #79, Red Hanrahan's Song About Ireland
Poem #160, The Realists
Poem #237, The Ballad of Father Gilligan
Poem #289, The Second Coming
Poem #309, The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Poem #324, Three Movements
Poem #407, Solomon and the Witch
Poem #436, When You Are Old
Poem #451, Leda and the Swan
Poem #511, Beautiful Lofty Things
Poem #577, The Cat and the Moon
Poem #597, He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Poem #641, The Road at My Door
Poem #655, No Second Troy
Poem #918, John Kinsella's Lament for Mrs Mary Moore

Poems from and about Ireland:
Poem #41, Ireland, Ireland  -- Sir Henry Newbolt
Poem #109, The Viking Terror  -- Anon. (Irish, 9th century)
Poem #167, Pangur Ban  -- Anon. (Irish, 8th century)
Poem #185, A Glass of Beer  -- David O'Bruadair
Poem #372, Icham of Irlaunde  -- Anon. (14th century)

Here's a nice article on today's poem:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/soundings/yeats.htm

John Kinsella's Lament for Mrs Mary Moore -- William Butler Yeats

(Poem #918) John Kinsella's Lament for Mrs Mary Moore A bloody and a sudden end, Gunshot or a noose, For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose. He might have had my sister, My cousins by the score, But nothing satisfied the fool But my dear Mary Moore, None other knows what pleasures man At table or in bed. What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead? Though stiff to strike a bargain Like an old Jew man, Her bargain stuck we laughed and talked And emptied many a can; And O! but she had stories, Though not for the priest's ear, To keep the soul of man alive, Banish age and care, And being old she put a skin On everything she said. What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead? The priests have got a book that says But for Adam's sin Eden's Garden would be there And I there within. No expectation fails there, No pleasing habit ends, No man grows old, no girl grows cold, But friends walk by friends. Who quarrels over halfpennies That plucks the trees for bread? What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead? -- William Butler Yeats

 From "Last Poems, 1936-39".
 Note on typography: the final couplet of each stanza is in italics in the
original, and unindented.

 A magnificent and touching elegy that paints a vivid picture of the
confused emotions of mourning. The poem's narrator, John Kinsella, is
initially angry with Death, with its arbitrary (and cruel) high-handedness
in taking away the one person he cannot do without, his "dear Mary Moore".
Rage, though, gives way to nostalgia, as he reflects tenderly on the times
spent his sweetheart, times filled with a bawdy joy, a fierce lust for life,
passionate and true. And nostalgia is in turn replaced by a wistfulness, a
longing for release, into a paradise where "No man grows old, no girl grows
cold / But friends walk by friends". This is a closure of sorts, though not,
perhaps, an entirely peaceful one.

 Note especially the (characteristically brilliant) use of a refrain: "What
shall I do for pretty girls / Now my old bawd is dead?", which captures both
the desolation of impending loneliness and the quality of the love that
Kinsella feels for Moore, a love that's based not on prettiness or passion,
but on comfort, and companionship, and closeness. Beautifully done.

thomas.

[Minstrels Links]

William Butler Yeats is one of my favourite poets:
Poem #1, The Song of Wandering Aengus
Poem #21, Sailing to Byzantium
Poem #32, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
Poem #60, Byzantium
Poem #79, Red Hanrahan's Song About Ireland
Poem #160, The Realists
Poem #237, The Ballad of Father Gilligan
Poem #289, The Second Coming
Poem #309, The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Poem #324, Three Movements
Poem #407, Solomon and the Witch
Poem #436, When You Are Old
Poem #451, Leda and the Swan
Poem #511, Beautiful Lofty Things
Poem #577, The Cat and the Moon
Poem #597, He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Poem #641, The Road at My Door
Poem #655, No Second Troy

Dylan Thomas is said to have liked today's poem very much; his own work
shares many of its qualities:
Poem #14, Prologue
Poem #38, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Poem #58, The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
Poem #138, Fern Hill
Poem #225, Poem In October
Poem #270, Under Milk Wood
Poem #335, After the Funeral (In memory of Ann Jones)
Poem #405, Altarwise by Owl-Light (Stanzas I - IV)
Poem #476, In my craft or sullen art
Poem #568, Especially when the October Wind

No Second Troy -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem:

(Poem #655) No Second Troy Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire? What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn? -- William Butler Yeats

We are studying Yeats' poetry in our class at the moment, and I dont think I
like his work very much; however, this poem made me pause while I was
skimming through his book of poems. There is something about this poem-
maybe it is the way in which beauty is synonymous to violence and misery, or
the inaccesibility of the woman, or her potential for causing so much
destruction...which makes the poem quite powerful.

Links:

Biography at poem #21

Commentary scattered throughout the several Yeats poems we've run - he's the
most frequently run poet on Minstrels, just ahead of Shakespeare and
Kipling.

The Road at My Door -- William Butler Yeats

It's been ages since I visited Yeats...

(Poem #641) The Road at My Door An affable Irregular, A heavily-built Falstaffian man, Comes cracking jokes of civil war As though to die by gunshot were The finest play under the sun. A brown Lieutenant and his men, Half dressed in national uniform, Stand at my door, and I complain Of the foul weather, hail and rain, A pear-tree broken by the storm. I count those feathered balls of soot The moor-hen guides upon the stream. To silence the envy in my thought; And turn towards my chamber, caught In the cold snows of a dream. -- William Butler Yeats

... but not ages since we last ran him on the Minstrels. The reason is
tolerably obvious - whenever I sharpen my pencil for a commentary on the
master, I find myself pre-empted by a guest submission. Not this time,
though - this time I'm determined to do the pre-empting myself.

First, some background: today's poem forms part of a sequence titled
'Meditations in Time of Civil War'. George Macbeth writes: "Irish history
and Irish politics came alive to Yeats through the doings of people he knew
and loved. His best work is a commentary on the history of a whole country
at the establishment of its freedom, a period of agonising crisis seen
through the eyes of a particularly sensitive and involved member of it.
Ireland was still small enough in the early twentieth century for one man to
feel its problems personally and mould great poetry out of them. No English
poet has been able during the last fifty or sixty years to do this for more
than one particular region. This more than anything else establishes Yeats'
preeminence" [1].

I find the phrase "no English poet" in the above passage especially
noteworthy. For Yeats is _not_ an English poet; he's an Irish poet, and
therein lies all the difference. It's impossible to read his work without
taking into cognizance the people, places and politics that gave rise to it,
the distinctly Irish concerns that inform it. What's especially remarkable
is the way this concentration of vision [2] never degenerates into mere
insularity...

Another (somewhat related) point: the ability to move effortlessly between
the specific instance and the overarching theme is one of the defining
qualities of Yeats' work; today's poem (written during the Irish upheavals
of the 1920s, when Yeats was in his sixties) exhibits this ability in
buckets. The anecdote told is straightforward enough, but Yeats does more
than just tell a story: he touches upon the themes of death and glory (and
their undeniable attraction even to an old man like himself) and contrasts
them with the peace and stability and, well, homeliness exemplified by the
moor-hen's chicks.

The final couplet bears repeating:
        "And turn towards my chamber, caught
         In the cold snows of a dream."
It bespeaks yet another change in the poem's direction: this time, into the
realms of poignancy and loss, the 'saddest words of tongue and pen'[3]. The
shift in tone is almost palpable...

thomas.

PS. I need hardly mention (this being Yeats) that the language is never
short of brilliant... utterly simple, yet it captures the moods he wishes to
evoke to a nicety. I wish I knew how he did it - I can't even begin to
explain the magic of his spell.

[1] 'Poetry 1900-1975', ed. George Macbeth, pub. Longman. Highly
recommended.
[2] Political vision, that is. His spiritual, romantic and philosophical
themes are another matter entirely: although they're equally 'concentrated',
they showcase a width and range rarely matched and almost never exceeded.
[3]     For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
        The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
                -- John Greenleaf Whittier, from the poem 'Maud Muller'
The poem as a whole is unmemorable, but these two lines have (justly)
attained immortality. The idea of 'possibility', especially as symbolized by
the open road, has been covered before on the Minstrels; see the links
section below.

[Links]

You want Yeats poems? You've got 'em. Click on
[broken link] http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index_poet.html
and scroll down to near the end.

Interestingly enough, of the 17 Yeats poems run so far (including today's),
8 have been guest submissions, 8 have been my own choices, and 1 is due to
Martin.

Poems about the idea of "The Road at My Door":
Tolkien, "The Road Goes Ever On", poem #4
Millay, "The Unexplorer", poem #49

Martin once did a theme on roads:
Rossetti, "Uphill", poem #47
Frost, "The Road Not Taken", poem #51
and the Millay mentioned above.

I'm sure there are more, but nothing springs to mind at the moment.

[Statistics Update]

(You really really need to know this stuff. I kid you not.)

The most popular poets on the Minstrels are
0. Anon: 19 poems
1. William Butler Yeats: 17 (including today's poem)
2. William Shakespeare: 15
3. Rudyard Kipling: 13
4. T. S. Eliot: 11
5. W. H. Auden: 10
6. Robert Browning: 10
7. Dylan Thomas: 10
8. J. R. R. Tolkien: 9
Six out of the above eight made their first appearance within 20 days of our
starting the list (no surprise there); the exceptions are Auden (almost two
months) and Browning (two and a half).

The most popular first name is William (58), which is streets ahead of John
(37), Robert (34) and Thomas (30).

There are no less than four poems on the Minstrels titled 'Untitled'.

The most popular adjective on the Minstrels is _not_ 'evocative', despite
what some people would have you think <grin>.

He wishes for the cloths of heaven -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem submitted by Tina George:

(Poem #597) He wishes for the cloths of heaven Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams. -- William Butler Yeats

I simply love this verse...I cannot think of any other lines that better
express my deepest thoughts about the question one so often searches for the
answers to: 'what is love?'

I first came across these lines in a book called "The Charmed Circle", when
I was all of 14 years old... To my young and (as yet) unimpressioned mind,
it spoke of a love so deep, so earnest and so 'giving' that it stayed with
me through the years in the quiet recesses of my mind, echoing gentle
reminders in soft undertones... "Tread softly because you tread on my
dreams"...

The years may have flown by since then and my impressions of love washed in
the many colours of experience... but the spirit of this verse remains.

Tina.

The Cat and the Moon -- William Butler Yeats

It's amazing: no less than three people submitted the same poem for
inclusion in our feline theme - Sunil Iyengar , Uma
Raman and Suresh Ramasubramanian .
Herewith, Sunil's commentary:

(Poem #577) The Cat and the Moon The cat went here and there And the moon spun round like a top, And the nearest kin of the moon, The creeping cat, looked up. Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon, For, wander and wail as he would, The pure cold light in the sky Troubled his animal blood. Minnaloushe runs in the grass Lifting his delicate feet. Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance? When two close kindred meet, What better than call a dance? Maybe the moon may learn, Tired of that courtly fashion, A new dance turn. Minnaloushe creeps through the grass From moonlit place to place, The sacred moon overhead Has taken a new phase. Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils Will pass from change to change, And that from round to crescent, From crescent to round they range? Minnaloushe creeps through the grass Alone, important and wise, And lifts to the changing moon His changing eyes. -- William Butler Yeats

A minor poem from one of the poet's best books, "The Wild Swans at Coole"
(1919), "The Cat and the Moon" requires scant comment. The furry protagonist
belonged to Maude Gonne, who once was to Yeats what Beatrice was to Dante.
This aspect is scarcely relevant to the poem, however, which foretells his
preoccupation with phases of the moon. (Yeats' "The Vision" was published in
1925, the year after he issued a slim volume, "The Cat and the Moon and
Certain Poems").

The poem adds a welcome quality to Yeats' oeuvre: an eagerness to engage
with animals ("Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?"). This tone is an
extension of his profound curiosity for other forms of spiritual life. To
escape my vague account, see Yeats' "To a Squirrel at Kyle-na-no," short
enough to be quoted in entirety:

        Come play with me;
        Why should you run
        Through the shaking tree
        As though I'd a gun
        To strike you dead?
        When all I would do
        Is to scratch your head
        And let you go.

This charming reticence reminds me of an equally uncharacteristic strain in
Yeats' contemporary, Robert Frost. At the head of Frost's "Collected Poems,"
one encounters this quiet proposal:

        I'm going out to fetch the little calf
        That's standing by the mother. It's so young
        It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
        I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.
                        (from "The Pasture")

Finally, no mock-analysis of Yeats' affection for felines can be complete
without this anecdote. Swinburne died on April 10, 1909. When Yeats met his
sister on the street the following day, he declared: "Now I am King of the
Cats." He was, and is.

Sunil Iyengar.

[EndQuote]

"When I play with my cat, who knows whether she isn't amusing herself with
me more than I am with her?"
        -- Montaigne,  Essays,  bk. II [1580], ch. 12.