Orbler
Byron Twain
Brenton
Dexter
Jeanne Dininni
Shilpa KarhikWilliam Butler Yeats
May 1st 2006 11:24
In my earlier post about John Keats, I mentioned Yeats and included a short poem of his, so it's only fair to give him some proper recognition by featuring him in today's post. William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and also quite prolific in his country as an Irish Senator and a co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. He was also a mystic and was involved in the formation of the Dublin Hermetic Order, and later became head of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
His early poems have a lot of mystical Irish spirit (and Yeats was an Irish nationalist). He later adopted a more modernist style, and then a more personal tone. These later, personal ones are my favourites, and here is one of them.
TWO SONGS OF A FOOL
by William Butler Yeats
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.
His early poems have a lot of mystical Irish spirit (and Yeats was an Irish nationalist). He later adopted a more modernist style, and then a more personal tone. These later, personal ones are my favourites, and here is one of them.
TWO SONGS OF A FOOL
by William Butler Yeats
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 Yeats (1865 - 1939)
| 52 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
Comment by Anonymous
and on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. she big me take life easy,
as the grass grows on the weirs; but i was young and foolish, and now am full of tears
Comment by Anonymous
and on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. she bid me take life easy,
as the grass grows on the weirs; but i was young and foolish, and now am full of tears