The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 3 of 8. The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the Stars

Sometimes one composes to a remembered air. I wrote and I still speak the verses that begin ‘Autumn is over the long leaves that love us’ to some traditional air, though I could not tell that air or any other on another’s lips, and The Ballad of Father Gilligan to a modification of the air A Fine Old English Gentleman. When, however, the rhythm is more personal than it is in these simple verses, the tune will always be original and personal, alike in the poet and in the reader who has the right ear; and these tunes will now and again have great beauty.

NOTE BY FLORENCE FARR

I made an interesting discovery after I had been elaborating the art of speaking to the psaltery for some time. I had tried to make it more beautiful than the speaking by priests at High Mass, the singing of recitative in opera and the speaking through music of actors in melodrama. My discovery was that those who had invented these arts had all said about them exactly what Mr. Arnold Dolmetsch and Mr. W. B. Yeats said about my art. Anyone can prove this for himself who will go to a library and read the authorities that describe how early liturgical chant, plain-song and jubilations or melismata were adapted from the ancient traditional music; or if they read the history of the beginning of opera and the ‘nuove musiche’ by Caccini, or study the music of Monteverde and Carissimi, who flourished at the beginning of the seventeenth century, they will find these masters speak of doing all they can to give an added beauty to the words of the poet, often using simple vowel sounds when a purely vocal effect was to be made whether of joy or sorrow. There is no more beautiful sound than the alternation of carolling or keening and a voice speaking in regulated declamation. The very act of alternation has a peculiar charm.

Now to read these records of music of the eighth and seventeenth centuries one would think that the Church and the opera were united in the desire to make beautiful speech more beautiful, but I need not say if we put such a hope to the test we discover it is groundless. There is no ecstasy in the delivery of ritual, and recitative is certainly not treated by opera-singers in a way that makes us wish to imitate them.

When beginners attempt to speak to musical notes they fall naturally into the intoning as heard throughout our lands in our various religious rituals. It is not until they have been forced to use their imaginations and express the inmost meaning of the words, not until their thought imposes itself upon all listeners and each word invokes a special mode of beauty, that the method rises once more from the dead and becomes a living art.

It is the belief in the power of words and the delight in the purity of sound that will make the arts of plain-chant and recitative the great arts they are described as being by those who first practised them.

THE WIND BLOWS OUT OF THE GATES OF THE DAY

THE WIND BLOWS OUT OF THE GATES OF THE DAY. [D] Florence FarrThe wind blows out of the gates of the day,The wind blows over the lonely of heart,And the lonely of heart is withered away,While the fairies dance in a place apart,Shaking their milkwhite feet in a ring,Tossing their milkwhite arms in the airFor they hear the wind laugh and murmur and singOf a land where even the old are fairAnd even the wise are merry of tongue.But I heard a reed of Coolaney say,When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung,The lovely of heart must wither away.

THE HAPPY TOWNLAND

THE HAPPY TOWNLAND. 4 Florence FarrO Death’s old bony fingerWill never find us thereIn the high hollow townlandWhere love’s to give and to spare;Where boughs have fruit and blossomat all times of the year;Where rivers are running overWith red beer and brown beer.An old man plays the bagpipesIn a gold and silver wood;Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,Are dancing in a crowd.ChorusThe little fox he murmured,‘O what of the world’s bane?’The sun was laughing sweetly,The moon plucked at my rein;But the little red fox murmured,‘O do not pluck at his rein,He is riding to the townlandThat is the world’s bane.’

I HAVE DRUNK ALE FROM THE COUNTRY OF THE YOUNG

I HAVE DRUNK ALE FROM THE COUNTRY OF THE YOUNG. 5 Florence FarrI have drunk ale from the Country of the YoungAnd weep because I know all things now:I have been a hazel tree and they hungThe Pilot Star and the Crooked PloughAmong my leaves in times out of mind:I became a rush that horses tread:I became a man, a hater of the wind,Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his headWould not lie on the breast or his lips on the hairOf the woman that he loves, Until he dies;Although the rushes and the fowl of the airCry of his love with their pitiful cries.

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUSW.B.YI 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.

THE HOST OF THE AIR

THE HOST OF THE AIRA.H.BO’Driscoll drove with a songThe wild duck and the drakeFrom the tall and tree tufted reedsOf the drear Hart Lake.

THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER

THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHERW.B.YI rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blowTill the seed of the fire flicker and glow;And then I must scrub and bake and sweepTill stars are beginning to blink and peep;And the young lie long and dream in their bedOf the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,And their day goes over in idleness,And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress;While I must work because I am old,And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

1

I have left them out of this edition as Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne and Gods and Fighting Men have made them unnecessary. When I began to write, the names of the Irish heroes were almost unknown even in Ireland.

2

Mr. Synge has outdone me with his Play Boy of the Western World, which towards the end of the week had more than three times the number in the pit alone. Counting the police inside and outside the theatre, there were, according to some evening papers, five hundred. —March, 1908.

3

The Violinist should time the music so as to finish when Aibric says “For everything is gone”.

4

The music as written suits my speaking voice if played an octave lower than the notation. – F.F.

5

To be spoken an octave lower than it would be sung. – F.F.