More to Winter than meets the Eye

"We are accustomed to consider Winter the grave of the year, but it is not so in reality. In the stripped trees, the mute birds, the disconsolate gardens, the frosty ground, there is only an apparent cessation of Nature's activities. Winter is pause in music, but during the pause the musicians are privately tuning their strings, to prepare for the coming outburst. When the curtain falls on one piece at the theatre, the people are busy behind the scenes making arrangements for that which is to follow. Winter is such pause, such fall of the curtain. Underground, beneath snow and frost, next spring and summer are secretly getting ready. The roses which young ladies will gather six months hence for hair or bosom, are already in hand. In Nature there is no such thing as paralysis. Each thing flows into the other, as movement into movement in graceful dances Nature's colours blend in imperceptible gradation all her notes are sequacious."

(Alexander Smith, 1829 -1867)

September 1913

 

 William Butler Yeats
 (Associated Press)

  No other reason for my choice of this poem than I love the poetry of WB Yeats, (his weaving of words, the rhythm and flow, his ability to create a sense of place and transport you there) and it is September.  I was introduced to Yeats's poetry at school in Dublin and he struck a chord deep inside the twelve year old me and to this day, I regularly feel the need to dip into his works. 

  

‘September 1913’  

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,
They’re with O’Leary in the grave. 

W B Yeats

About W B Yeats:     http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-butler-yeats

About the poem September 1913: http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/romantic-ireland-yeats-and-the-irish-times-poetry-on-newsprint-1.1509856

Musical version of September 1913 by The Waterboys from their album 'An Appointment with Mr Yeats'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOG8J9DeEKo