Responses to the Poems of W.B. Yeats

My new work in response to the poems of W.B. Yeats, coming after my previous success in 2016, the Come Away exhibition.

Inspired directly by the Poems of W.B. Yeats

Optionally, play the song version of Yeats' Red Hanrahan's Song About Ireland from YouTube as you view this art.

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.

Red Hanrahan's Song About Ireland

2024 Version

THE old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand,

Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand;

Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies,

But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes

Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.

The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knock- narea,

And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say.

Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat;

But we have all bent low and low and kissed the quiet feet

Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.

In the Seven Woods

I HAVE heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods

Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees

Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away

The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness

That empty the heart.

The Withering of the Boughs

The honey pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill,

And I fell asleep upon lovely Echtge of streams.

No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;

The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

The Song of Wandering Aengus

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 White Birds

I WOULD that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!

We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;

And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,

Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.

A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose;

Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,

Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:

For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,

Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;

Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be,

Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!

"Yeats remembered a day that he had spent with Maud Gonne on the cliffs of Howth, looking down on the bay and the Bailey lighthouse, and in memory of that day came the poem first published in 1890, 'The White Birds'."

~ Benedict Kiely, via "Yeats' Ireland" (1994, Tiger Books)

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.

Easter 1916 / A Stone of the Heart

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...

...Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Other musings on W.B. Yeats

A Sea Dream

I always enjoy reading Yeats' poetry, especially before I go to sleep. My subconscious produces amazing, colourful dreams, hence the maritime dreamscape opposite.

"Dylan Thomas said, wisely enough, that when reading poetry, you should read until you find what you like, and then read it again. Preferably, I might add, read it aloud, with or without an audience. The angels will hear you."

~ via "Yeats' Ireland" (Tiger Books, published 1994) by Benedict Kiely

One Nation

I think that says it all, doesn't it?

Exhibitions Navigation:

Come Away (2016) ←W.B. Yeats (New Work) →Pastel Portraits

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