Things I am grateful for #40/365

Okay, you lucky people, you get an extra one today as I’m behind on one.

This is one of my all-time favourite poems by W.B. Yeats, 13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939.

He was an Irish poet, founder of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, the first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 and also an Irish Senator. Not too shabby.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

W. B. Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats as you’ve never heard before…

Just a quickie today. I wanted to share this stunning musical version of W.B. Yeats’ poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

Sung by Angel Harrigan, it’s hauntingly seductive. Music by Roger Gregg, from the album, Serpent In The Bee-Loud Glade.

Brought to my attention by one of Ireland’s preeminent poets, Patrick Chapman. Have a sneaky listen to one of his poems here, too.

P.S. Apologies to my FB friends for whom I have already shared this.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

By W.B. Yeats

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

He wishes for the cloths of heaven.

By W.B. Yeats.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.