When you are old (WBYeats)

[mat james]

blonde madonna,

it is what came into my head when I read this, forgive me.

Yes, it is funny how the brain makes odd connections. I viewed the "youtube" link and enjoyed it. I love those old film clips.
A smell can bring back a memory and maybe the pain you found in Henry Lawson's poem connected with the pain you felt at another time, that time back there in the 80's.
It fits the theme of "lost love" and mabe Poe was right.
So who was it that you felt so much for who didn't remember you?

Lizzy, you seem to understand the poet as well as the poem.
Joney wrote,

I didn't realise that he was talking about himself, I thought he was talking about others.

Yes Joney, he was talking about himself. And if we are lucky, we know or have met someone like Henry in our life. Bleak and beautiful.(I have a friend like that)
Henry was brave and empathetic, without ego in his writing; he saw and recorded the pain and the beauty in others and rarely "cared" for himself.
Why does a man like that destroy himself?
Maybe it was that girl.
I think Maud may have understood Henry's pain.

She left a message for me to read,
Where the wild wide oceans flow;
Do you know how the heart of a man can bleed
Do you think that I do not know?

Regards, Matj

[blonde madonna]

So who was it that you felt so much for who didn't remember you?

When I was thinking about the humiliation (that I hope I am not the only one to have experienced) of loving someone who has found someone else, of how you learn to protect yourself, I thought of the line 'Never give all the heart' (and Joney I think this really is full circle).

Never give all the Heart by W.B. Yeats

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

Some words just take lodging inside you.

[lizzytysh]

When I was thinking about the humiliation (that I hope I am not the only one to have experienced) of loving someone who has found someone else, of how you learn to protect yourself,

If you're taking a poll, count me in . I'm not recalling a direct, from-me-to-them situation; but even with the interim space, the pain was as great.


~ Lizzy

[mat james]

Well Lizzy,
be brave enough to tell us about that pain.
Isn't that where poetry emanates from?

[lizzytysh]

That's where personal poetry emanates from, I know. Different kinds of pain lend to different kinds of poetry, too. Manna recently showed me through an example of how feeling/expressing a particular kind of pain/suffering can lead to poetry; yet, the way she was able to do it would never have occurred to me. Seeing it done [afterward], it seems so do-able; yet, only after the fact. I don't know what it is that makes for some people having an affinity for writing poetry and others not; but I know that's how it is. It's not my reluctance to share that pain; but my seeming inability to do so in poetic form. It really lends tremendously to my enjoying that of others. Thanks for your encouragement, though. Are you planning to enter the poetry comp, Mat? I hope so.


~ Lizzy

[Red Poppy]

Hi pbshel67,
I think the poem is very powerful, too, but politically while Yeats supported Irish nationalism in the early twentieth century (under the influence of and love for Maude Gonne) he subsequently became extremely right wing and during his time as a senator in the Irish Parliament and subsequently his politics drifted from nationalist to ultra nationalist.

[mat james]

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;

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

We are all pilgrims
and it is good to have been "loved"
I just enjoy the melancholy in that line. Don't you?

[Red Poppy]

[quote="pbshel67"]What is ultra-nationalist? He was trying to help forge a unified Ireland that could better resist English oppression. I think that the ultra-nationalists were the ones he described in "Easter 1916." He agreed with the cause, but not with the methods. Gore Vidal said that he agreed with many of Timothy McVeigh's ideas, but not his methods, for example. Ezra Pound, however, was actually quite fascist in his defense of national sovereignty over economic cosmopolitanism..[/quote]

That, comrade, seems a very simplistic view of the situation in 1916.
Yeats's views on 1916 changed, as did his views on the war of Independence that followed and on the Civil war that followed that.
This is one of my problems with Yeats - his views on many things were swayed not by politics or history or conviction but by fancy (for one woman) and by fashion. Not that there's anything wrong with changing your mind - Frost's words come to mind, I was never radical in my youth for fear of being conservative in my old age.
England was almost certainly well on the way to giving some form of independence in the wake of WW 1 but 1916 cut across that political tide. The great failure of 1916 was that it paved the way for Fine Gael and later Fianna Fail to recreate an Irish version of the English government that had been in place. The gombeen-nationalist element took control of the means of production, took contol of the land and took control of politics, replacing one middle-class group with another. James Connolly's and the Citizen Army's involvement in 1916 was a mistake in that regard, allowing Labour to be sucked into and, ultimately, swallowed by nationalism.
But it's later, in the thirties, that Yeats politics drifted further to the right in a European context and wouldn't have been a million miles from Pound in terms of belief.

[Jimmy O'Connell]

Politics

In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms.
Thoma Mann

HOW can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!

William Butler Yeats
23May1938


I have come late into this thread... but I can't resist a few words about Yeats.

The above poem was written at the end of his life. It is the final poem in his Collected Works. I'm not sure I agree with RP. He was deeply political... had fascist tendencies... as did many many so-called democratic leadres of the 30s. Roosevelt and Churchill admired Mussolini and Hitler. I don't think one an say he was merely following "fashion" or "Swayed by fancy..."

England was almost certainly well on the way to giving some form of independence in the wake of WW 1 but 1916 cut across that political tide. The great failure of 1916 was that it paved the way for Fine Gael and later Fianna Fail to recreate an Irish version of the English government that had been in place. The gombeen-nationalist element took control of the means of production, took contol of the land and took control of politics, replacing one middle-class group with another. James Connolly's and the Citizen Army's involvement in 1916 was a mistake in that regard, allowing Labour to be sucked into and, ultimately, swallowed by nationalism.

This is a very debatable notion... one that I don't agree with but my point in quoting it is that Yeats himself returned to a theme that is core to his poetry. In the midst of politics what really matters is.... fill in the blanks. You can reduce it to "all he was looking for was what all men want..." Ladies I ain't going there... but an interpretation is that ultimately all that matters is love and relationships, or what EM Forster said "only connect"!!!

I think Yeats, ultimately, was "swayed" by what is "ultimate" in human history. Whether he was a "great" man or a "great" poet, (the distinction between the ethical and the aesthetic) is beside the point, and will be endlessly debated. We read/study him not because he was a nice man or a saint, but because he was a great poet.

Jimmy

[Red Poppy]

I agree with some of what you say Jimmy. But my point is that sometimes the politics of the man comes between the reader and the written word - as indeed our own politics often come between us and what we read.
But with Yeats there were very definite tendencies towards fascism, as you say, and because some of the "democratic" leaders of the mid-twentieth century admired Hitler & Mussolini (and ignored what was happening to the Jews across Europe until it interfered with their own plans) isn't really a recommendation.
One of my points was that Yeats interest in Irish nationalism swayed with the state of the reciprocation of his affection by Ms Gonne.
On the England/Ireland question - I think the tide of global politics in the twentieth century suggests that independence (within the commonwealth at the very least) was on the way but that might be a discussion only of interest to Irish posters!

[Joney]

I don't know much about Yeats and politics but he was a very good poet.

But didn't a famous poet write
"Give me absolute control
Over every living soul"
A fascist statement if ever I heard one but he was only joking (I hope!)

[Red Poppy]

So do I.The irony in the velvet glove (or is that voice? Hardly).

[Red Poppy]

I'm not quite sure what the connection between Yeats and the Democrats is but he believed in an aspect of free speech, insofar as he didn't openly suggest a clampdown on free speech in this country. But he might be considered a fellow traveller with the blueshirts in Ireland - who certainly didn't believe in free speech and had the coshes to prove it!

[William]

"Well, they know how to make money and enjoy their lives."

That has nothing to do with smartness. That has to do with finance, luck, ego, inheritance, exploitation, work - any or all of these but not smartness of necessity.

Rich and thick often go together. Just look at our Royal family here in Britain!

[jill]

An old question from this thread: "Is nature fascist? "

Survival of the fittest is fascist.

Is nature fascist? Most of the time. But nurturing others brings out our best "nature"", I believe.

Pound was imprisoned in Washington, D.C. at Saint Elizabeth's Institution for his fascist radio broadcasts during WWII . He was found not guilty for reasons of insanity. Robert Frost , who did not share Pound's views petitioned the Eisenhower administration to free him. One argument was that it did not reflect well on the US if a great poet died in prison.

I believe that the philosophy of a poet does not affect the quality of his poem. but as these posts reveal,it helps to know the poet's story.
Jill