Addendum: The last moments of Poetry Appreciation Month

[greygirlbeast]

Just thought I'd get in a couple of shorts as the month ticks away:

"The Two Trees"

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with merry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Loves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the wingèd sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.

Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile.
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For all things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.

— William Butler Yeats

"Mad Song"

The wild winds weep,
And the night is a-cold;
Come hither, Sleep,
And my griefs infold:

But lo! the morning peeps
Over the eastern steeps,
And rustling birds of dawn
The earth do scorn.

Lo! to the vault
of paved heaven,
With sorrow fraught
My notes are driven:
They strike the ear of night,
Make weep the eyes of day;
They make mad the roaring winds,
And with tempests play.

Like a fiend in a cloud
With howling woe,
After night I do croud,
And with night will go;
I turn my back to the east,
From whence comforts have increas'd;
For light doth seize my brain
With frantic pain.

— William Blake

Comments

[wolven.livejournal.com]

The two trees was always my favourite Yeats poem, and your posting this reminded me how much I loved the last time you used it. One of my favourite stories of yours.

Thank you.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

The two trees was always my favourite Yeats poem, and your posting this reminded me how much I loved the last time you used it. One of my favourite stories of yours.

Thank you.

You're welcome. The last time I used it. That would have been The Dreaming, I suppose. The story about Licien, Christina, Yeats, and Echo. That's still one of my favourites from the series as well.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

That's precisely th one I mean. Both story and poem have stayed with me, through quite a lot.

Again: Thank you.

[stsisyphus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reminding me to post on "Carbon White", incidentally. Much shorter than I remembered.