I am by no means a literary scholar, but I bought a William
Butler Yeats collection of Irish Fairy and Folk Tails. Yates collected these and must have thought
that they represented a good selection of work on the Irish imagination. I read
a chapter every so often.
Yeats of course, did a "little" writing
himself. And it is the same Irish
imagination that Yeats himself used to expand upon when he wrote about the
simple facts of life and described longing and love. What one person might describe as the sad
emptiness that an older person may feel towards lost friends and lovers, Yeats
could describe it in such a way that makes it ethereal.
When You Are
Old
When
you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And
nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And
slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your
eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How
many loved your moments of glad grace,
And
loved your beauty with love false or true,
But
one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And
loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And
bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur,
a little sadly, how Love fled
And
paced upon the mountains overhead
And
hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
—William Butler Yeats
I like this poem very much because it not only speaks about the lost love, but also says much about the person feeling the loss. I asked my son who is a graphic artists to take the poem and create a small poster that helps further convey the sense of the poem:
I printed some of these up and make them available.
http://sportingchancepress.com/spc_posters.html
