On a very hot week in the UK, here is a deliciously cold poem. One of my favourites from Yeats, it is filled with dazzling phrases - “riddled with light” takes some beating. But also - as always with WBY it has a sinuous and puzzling logic that leaves you hanging in mystery by the end. How does that winter sky punish the recently deceased ghost?
Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season
With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,
Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,
Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
By the injustice of the skies for punishment?
Gorgeous; thank you
For me, it's more about the indifference of the skies. What more punishment could there be to our lives - in which we invest so much passion, so much heat - than for the sum of it to mean nothing in the face of something bigger? Lovely stuff, thanks Alistair. T x
Thank for sharing the poem Alistair. Hot even in Scotland today. 30C just now where I live. Hoping it cools a bit by this evening when I am supposed to walking up a hill!
I love Yeats poetry. I was first introduced to it through a couple of his poems that had been set to music by the Canadian singer/songwriter Loreena Mckennit (whose music I love) - The Two Trees and The Stolen Child.
I am also singing "He wishes for the cloths of heaven" at a concert in September, which has also been set to music for one of the choirs I sing with.
Thank you for introducing me to a new one.
Alastair! One of his amazing poems; thanks .
Feeling for u all in the heat. Much of our land in Australia is ‘a sunburnt country‘ ( poem : DorotheaMackellar) is so hot a lot of the time. England’s just not used to it
punish it with rain, hail, snow, stormy weather?