The Song of the Wandering Aengus by William Butler Yeats
The Song of Wandering Aengus
by William Butler Yeats
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
My dog Aengus is named after this poem. :) But beyond that deeply affectionate bond to this piece, it’s such a gorgeous piece written by Yeats in his early 30s, with such fantastic mythical nods to the salmon of knowledge and the mythology behind it, and the sense of glimpsing and seeking.
The girl was Maud Gonne who shaped both this poem and the rest of Yeats’ lyric life. Maud Gonne (1866–1953) was an Irish revolutionary, actress, and one of the most striking women of her generation — six feet tall, strikingly beautiful, fiercely committed to Irish independence and women's rights, and the great unrequited love of W.B. Yeats's life. Yeats met her in 1889, when he was twenty-three and she was twenty-two, and proposed to her four times across the next twenty-eight years; she refused him each time. The Song of Wandering Aengus (1899) was written ten years into the pursuit; the glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair / who called me by my name and ran / and faded through the brightening air is unmistakably Maud, both the actual woman who refused him and the visionary figure who haunted his work for the rest of his life.
