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    The Wind Among the Reeds
    The Wind Among the Reeds
    The Wind Among the Reeds
    Ebook58 pages2 hours

    The Wind Among the Reeds

    By William Butler Yeats

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    Irish poet and dramatist and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and founded the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief during its early years. In 1923, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation;" and he was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers whose greatest works were completed after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower [1928] and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929].
    Yeats was born and educated in Dublin, but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slowly paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the lyricism of the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. Over the years, Yeats adopted many different ideological positions, including, in the words of the critic Michael Valdez Moses, "those of radical nationalist, classical liberal, reactionary conservative and millenarian nihilist".
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam Butler Yeats
    Release dateNov 1, 2015
    ISBN9788892513464
    Author

    William Butler Yeats

    W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet. Born in Sandymount, Yeats was raised between Sligo, England, and Dublin by John Butler Yeats, a prominent painter, and Susan Mary Pollexfen, the daughter of a wealthy merchant family. He began writing poetry around the age of seventeen, influenced by the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but soon turned to Irish folklore and the mystical writings of William Blake for inspiration. As a young man he joined and founded several occult societies, including the Dublin Hermetic Order and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, participating in séances and rituals as well as acting as a recruiter. While these interests continued throughout Yeats’ life, the poet dedicated much of his middle years to the struggle for Irish independence. In 1904, alongside John Millington Synge, Florence Farr, the Fay brothers, and Annie Horniman, Yeats founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which opened with his play Cathleen ni Houlihan and Lady Gregory’s Spreading the News and remains Ireland’s premier venue for the dramatic arts to this day. Although he was an Irish Nationalist, and despite his work toward establishing a distinctly Irish movement in the arts, Yeats—as is evident in his poem “Easter, 1916”—struggled to identify his idealism with the sectarian violence that emerged with the Easter Rising in 1916. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, however, Yeats was appointed to the role of Senator and served two terms in the position. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, and continued to write and publish poetry, philosophical and occult writings, and plays until his death in 1939.

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      Book preview

      The Wind Among the Reeds - William Butler Yeats

      The Wind Among the Reeds

      William Butler Yeats

      Table of Contents

      The Hosting of the Sidhe

      The Everlasting Voices

      The Moods

      Aedh Tells of the Rose in his Heart

      The Host of the Air

      Breasal the Fisherman

      A Cradle Song

      Into the Twilight

      The Song of Wandering Aengus

      The Song of the Old Mother

      The Fiddler of Dooney

      The Heart of the Woman

      Aedh Laments the Loss of Love

      Mongan Laments the Change that has Come upon Him and his Beloved

      Michael Robartes Bids his Beloved Be at Peace

      Hanrahan Reproves the Curlew

      Michael Robartes Remembers Forgotten Beauty

      A Poet to his Beloved

      Aedh Gives his Beloved Certain Rhymes

      To My Heart, Bidding it have No Fear

      The Cap and Bells

      The Valley of the Black Pig

      Michael Robartes Asks Forgiveness Because of his Many Moods

      Aedh Tells of A Valley Full of Lovers

      Aedh Tells of the Perfect Beauty

      Aedh Hears the Cry of the Sedge

      Aedh Thinks of Those who have Spoken Evil of his Beloved

      The Blessed

      The Secret Rose

      Hanrahan Laments Because of his Wanderings

      The Travail of Passion

      The Poet Pleads with his Friend for Old Friends

      Hanrahan Speaks to the Lovers of his Songs in Coming Days

      Aedh Pleads with the Elemental Powers

      Aedh Wishes his Beloved Were Dead

      Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

      Mongan Thinks of his past Greatness

      Notes

      The Hosting of the Sidhe

      The host is riding from Knocknarea

      And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;

      Caolte tossing his burning hair

      And Niamh calling Away, come away:

      Empty your heart of its mortal dream.

      The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,

      Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,

      Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,

      Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;

      And if any gaze on our rushing band,

      We come between him and the deed of his hand,

      We come between him and the hope of his heart.

      The host is rushing ’twixt night and day,

      And where is there hope or deed as fair?

      Caolte tossing his burning hair,

      And Niamh calling Away, come away.

      The Everlasting Voices

      O sweet everlasting Voices be still;

      Go to the guards of the heavenly fold

      And bid them wander obeying your will

      Flame under flame, till Time be no more;

      Have you not heard that our hearts are old,

      That you call in birds, in wind on the hill,

      In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore?

      O sweet everlasting Voices be still.

      The Moods

      Time drops in decay,

      Like a candle burnt out,

      And the mountains and woods

      Have their day, have their day;

      What one in the rout

      Of the fire-born moods,

      Has fallen away?

      Aedh Tells of the Rose in his Heart

      All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,

      The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,

      The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,

      Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

      The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;

      I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,

      With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold

      For my dreams

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