The Wind Among the ReedsYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
General
The Wind Among the Reeds
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
English poetry -- Irish authors
lonely, for water is everywhere the signature of the fruitfulness of the
body and of the fruitfulness of dreams. The white hair of Fionn may be
but another of the troubles of those that come to unearthly wisdom and
earthly trouble, and the threats and violence of the Fiana against her,
a different form of the threats and violence the country people use, to
make the Tribes of Danu give up those that are 'away.' Bare is now often
called an ugly old woman; but Dr. Joyce says that one of her old names
was Aebhin, which means beautiful. Aebhen was the goddess of the tribes
of northern Leinster; and the lover she had made immortal, and who loved
her perfectly, left her, and put on mortality, to fight among them
against the stranger, and died on the strand of Clontarf.
'AEDH,' 'HANRAHAN' AND 'MICHAEL ROBARTES' IN THESE POEMS.
These are personages in 'The Secret Rose;' but, with the exception of
some of Hanrahan's and one of Aedh's poems, the poems are not out of
that book. I have used them in this book more as principles of the mind
than as actual personages. It is probable that only students of the
magical tradition will understand me when I say that 'Michael Robartes'
is fire reflected in water, and that Hanrahan is fire blown by the wind,
and that Aedh, whose name is not merely the Irish form of Hugh, but the
Irish for fire, is fire burning by itself. To put it in a different way,
Hanrahan is the simplicity of an imagination too changeable to gather
permanent possessions, or the adoration of the shepherds; and Michael
Robartes is the pride of the imagination brooding upon the greatness of
its possessions, or the adoration of the Magi; while Aedh is the myrrh
and frankincense that the imagination offers continually before all that
it loves.
AEDH PLEADS WITH THE ELEMENTAL POWERS.
MONGAN THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS.
AEDH HEARS THE CRY OF THE SEDGE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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