When it comes to my featured National
Poetry Month poet for today, I’m back to my Shakespeare problem: the poet
is William Butler Yeats,
And which of his poems do I pick?
The one that introduced me to him was “Lake Isle of Innisfree”. That was in high school. And the poem that sparked the argu—I mean,
discussion about poetic meaning
versus sounds with my French professor was “Host of the Air”. And then there's "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death"; see what I mean?
(And, MSWord, are you kidding me? You’re not recognizing Innisfree?)
You can get lost in Yeats, or in any of his poems. I
have done, many, many times. It’s hard to pick up anything he’s written and not become completely enmeshed in his imagery, in the world he builds. I was
walking around the Sligo countryside (okay—this is just beyond the beyond:
MSWord doesn’t like Sligo) a good 20 years on from high school and completely
thought, “peace comes dropping slow”—that’s how much Yeats gets into your
blood.
So, I don’t know what to give you.
Well—I’ll start with “Easter, 1916”. The historical event—one of
the periodic attempts by the Irish to drive out the English; this one was
supposed to be funded and supplied by the Germans, who reckoned that they
could benefit from Britain facing a two-front war, so to speak. The old Irish
motto has always been, “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”, but in
this instance, there was confusion, lack of coordination and an unexpected
reaction from the English involving heavy artillery and vicious executions of
the leadership.
(Why, exactly, that came as a surprise I’m not
clear. But that whole Anglo-Irish situation isn’t going to be solved or even
explained in a single post, so we’ll just carry on, okay?)
It was a whole thing. And I’ve made my own
pilgrimage to the General Post Office, where you could still see the bullet
holes (like you can at Chapultepec).
Yeats was an Irish nationalist, but not a revolutionary. He decried the use of
violence, as, indeed, did a large number of the Irish—until the Brits started
the summary executions. And--like the man said—a terrible beauty was born.
(Yeats was so revolted by the executions that he was
even willing to count John MacBride as a hero/martyr—whom he loathed as the
drunken, vain-glorious lout who married the woman Yeats loved hopelessly his
whole life.)
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.
But I couldn’t let you go without “The Second Coming”.
This one, written in 1919, is just so powerful. “Easter, 1916” is specific; “Second
Coming” is universal.
We’re still working to understand what rough beast
has emerged from that widening gyre.
The
Second Coming
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 conviction, 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?
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