And now for some Yeats

[etumukutenyak]

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.



Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


Ah, he had a way with words. Comes of being Irish, so it does. ;-) Although he was born in Dublin, he said (somewhere) that Sligo was very important to him. All I can say is, he never was in Killashandra, then. :-P ;-)

No, I'm not biased at all, am I hawkwing_lb?? :-D

Comments

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Cavan's the wrong end of the country for Sligo!

Now me, I couldn't say where dear William Butler was born. I do know he was raised in Sligo, educated in England, and in later life spent significant amounts of time at Lady Gregory's estates in Sligo. He married and lived near Ben Bulben head - some of his poems, such as Meditations in Time of Civil War, describe his home a little.

One of his early poems, Innisfree - written while he was living in London - is an ode to an island in Sligo.

This is what happens when you subject impressionable young people to intensive poetry education. I can discourse at length upon certain of WB Yeats' poems, and know a little about the man himself.

(I nicked the words in my current icon from Easter 1916)

I don't know, are you biased? I really couldn't tell... :-)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Hm. I could have sworn he was born in Dublin and lived there off and on over the course of his life, although he certainly lived in other places.

Ah, I know Cavan's not on the way, but Killashandra's not too far from Mullingar, and that's on the road to Dublin. If only a flat tire had forced a stop along the way, then he might have found the prettiest place in all Ireland.

Yep, not biased one bit.

Now, since you're not discoursing on Irish, why not discourse a bit on Yeats? Have a go at your favorite poems? Besides "The Second Coming". I've always liked the "Wild Swans at Coole".

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Discourse on Yeats? Fie on you, evil one, that sounds entirely too much like work to my tastes!

:-)

But perhaps, perhaps... I've always preferred "Easter 1916" and "Sailing to Byzantium". "Innisfree" is good for a comparison with "Byzantium" and when one speaks of "Easter 1916" one should probably take a look at "September 1913" as well...

I could look out some of my old English papers at some point. Perhaps. I doubt I'll be thinking new thoughts, though...

...Mind, if you like Yeats, have you ever had a look at Seamus Heaney? His "The Tollund Man" from (I think) the collection North is pratically my favorite poem ever.

...Bridegroom to the goddess,
She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen, those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body.
Trove of the turf-cutters' honeycombed workings,
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.

It raises shivers on my spine :-)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Seamus Heaney? Hm. No, I don't believe I've read any of his, although I've heard of him. I shall have to go look this up.