William Butler Yeats by John Singer Sargent 1908
Maude Gonne – the woman who inspired Yeats’ poem…he never stopped loving the pilgrim soul in her.
Photo credits
William Butler Years and Maude Gonne William Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
Yeats Country photo credit: Day 2 – Ben Bulben via photopin (license)
It is a spectacular poem of deepest love. Why do we, lesser writers, not simply read instead? Oh my!
That’s the danger of reading – sometimes you just want to lay down your pen. While I was on the Masters course in creative writing the lecturer was sorry that he had to give The Dead by James Joyce as a set text…he was afraid we would never write another word again.
If I needed another nudge to simply abandon hope you may just have offered it! Was teetering on the brink anyway. What else is worth doing asks Sisyphus?
Don’t say that, please. Go and read a very bad book, now! There’s plenty out there. There’s probably more bad poetry than any thing else, but there’s also a ton of – published – books that would set your teeth on edge if you weren’t confident, bone-deep confident, that you could do better. Stephen King believes in reading bad books to boost your confidence at times like this….
Thank you for the kind offer Bridget. I will dig one or two out from the reject shelf and go to…
That’s a beautiful poem, thank you for sharing it
An interesting post, and a deeply moving poem. Happy birthdyay WB.
Reblogged this on Ann Perrin.