My first ever poem sharing activity!
Even though I missed the introduction of
interpretation program, I still think it's worthwhile. Like Jerry said, in our
department, we study literature, but it is too often that we only read it for
tests and thus it always associates with pain. Once in a while, we need these
kinds of activities to refresh our love of literature.
Here is the poem I read, September 1913. I have to
admit, I actually don't know Yeats that well, so Constance helped me pick one.
And her recommendation is great! The more I read, the more I like it. It's a
serious and sad poem, full of disappointment and disillusion. He was
unsatisfied with the indifferent public, who abandon the passion and hope of
seeking independence. So he lamented " Romantic Ireland's dead and gone/
It's with O'Leary in the grave" But he also questions the efforts of those
heroes, whether their efforts are in vain. Or even cruelly, do they know what
they are fighting for? "All that delirium of the brave?"
Nevertheless, he wishes that he could "turn the years again,/ And call those
exiles as they were /In all their loneliness and pain."
September 1913
W. B. Yeats
What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry `Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry `Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave.
Me reading the poem on youtube
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