Again With the Cloud-Pale Eyelids, Yeats?

I am now reading The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats I have my own personal favorites in the bunch – but I’ve never sat down and read them ALL straight through.

It’s an interesting experience – reading his earlier poems, which are, all in all, claptrap. It’s so funny to me – it’s like reading Sylvia Plath’s complete poems in chronological order (which I have done). You read her stilted sonnets (they’re God-awful – she is not even full of FEELING – like you should be when you write a sonnet – she’s coy, she’s self-conscious – they’re terrible), the arch overly clever rhymes, you need your damn Thesaurus sitting beside you because she is so eager to show you how her vocabulary is huge … you should have Edith Hamilton’s Mythology on hand as well … so that you can look up all her archaic references which clutter the text, making it unreadable … With the brief exception of a couple of poems (“Pursuit”, for example) – Sylvia Plath’s earliest stuff is beyond tiresome. Her early poems, to me, are the equivalent of a 5 year old girl showing the adults in the room her ruffled undies and expecting to be praised. But then … you watch the artist emerge … 1959 she starts getting closer to her voice … 1960 … closer still … and then in 1961 and 1962 it is as though a completely different woman emerges in the verse. All of the bullshit in the earlier poems – the desperation to please, the intellectual suffocation, the lack of ANY ORIGINALITY WHATSOEVER … has vanished … and there she stands, a true artist. You can’t really get that perspective unless you suffer through those earlier poems.

Anyway, that’s what I’m doing with Yeats right now.

Here’s my imitation of his early poems – They all kind of sound like this to me (with a couple of exceptions):

And the green tree bends over the pagan fields
And the twinkly old eyes by the fireside laugh
The ghosts of yore dance a jig in the flames
And I, And I …
I succumb to the music of the spheres.

Poem after poem after poem after poem … twinkling old Irish eyes, and pagan spirits, and Celtic fairy nonsense … I have just now reached “The Wild Swans at Coole”, and I read that thinking: “Now THERE is a poem.”

But still – I have enjoyed reading his earlier stuff. You can see him hacking out a space for himself. You can see him attempting to express his concerns, his themes – it’s just that he’s self-conscious at first.

Also: the phrase “her cloud-pale eyelids” appears pretty much in every single one of the early poems.

“I kiss her cloud-pale eyelids …”
“Her long hair drapes over her cloud-pale eyelids”
“With her flaming tresses and her cloud-pale eyelids …”

You could create some sort of drinking game around the number of times “cloud-pale eyelids” appears in Yeats’ juvenilia.

It’s a nice image, actually – “cloud-pale eyelids” – but … only sparingly!

Again, there are some startling exceptions to the awful-ness of most of this early verse: “The Host of the Air” (which, actually, I know by heart – thanks to the Clancy Brothers at Carnegie Hall album – which we listened to almost constantly as children. So “The Host of the Air” is one of those things that I memorized by osmosis and repetition. I didn’t sit down and concentrate on memorizing it- but here it is – 30 years later, and I still know all the words. So let me show off:)

O’Driscoll drove with a song
The wild duck and the drake
From the tall and the tufted reeds
Of the drear Heart Lake.

And he saw how the reeds grew dark
At the coming of night-tide,
And dreamed of the long dim hair
Of Bridget his bride.

He heard while he sang and dreamed
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.

And he saw young men and young girls
Who danced on a level place,
And Bridget his bride among them,
With a sad and a gay face.

The dancers crowded about him
And many a sweet thing said,
And a young man brought him red wine
And a young girl white bread.

But Bridget drew him by the sleeve
Away from the merry bands,
To old men playing at cards
With a twinkling of ancient hands.

The bread and the wine had a doom,
For these were the host of the air;
He sat and played in a dream
Of her long dim hair.

He played with the merry old men
And thought not of evil chance,
Until one bore Bridget his bride
Away from the merry dance.

He bore her away in his arms,
The handsomest young man there,
And his neck and his breast and his arms
Were drowned in her long dim hair.

O’Driscoll scattered the cards
And out of his dream awoke:
Old men and young men and young girls
Were gone like a drifting smoke;

But he heard high up in the air
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.

Now – granted – there’s a lot of claptrap there, and it is very sentimental – but for me, it works. There’s a bittersweetness there, a nostalgia – that is very human – and expressed in simple verses. I don’t know – it calls something up out of me.

So there’s THAT. No “cloud-pale eyelids” there although we do get the ubiquitous twinkling old men round the fire.

Most of the early stuff is pretty terrible. However – reading through it makes his later genius all the much more startling!

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16 Responses to Again With the Cloud-Pale Eyelids, Yeats?

  1. Chai-rista says:

    hahahaha!!! I love to listen to you go on about poets. Great insights.

  2. Another Sheila says:

    Sheila! I, too, grew up with the Clancy Brothers live albums played constantly. On one such album (I’m not sure which, they’re all at my parents’), the lead-in to “Carrickfergus” is a poem that goes something like this (words I’m not sure of or can’t remember are ***)

    He stumbled home from Clifden fair
    With *** song and cheeks aglow.
    Yet there was something in his air
    That told of kingship long ago
    I turned, and inly burned with grief
    That one so high should fall so low.

    But he plucked a flower
    And he sniffed its scent
    And raised it to the ** sky.
    Some old, sweet rapture through him went
    And kindled in his bloodshot eye.
    I sighed, and inly cried for joy
    That one so low should rise so high.

    I can hear this in my head exactly as it is recited in the song (not sure who did the reciting, but I think maybe it was Tommy Makem.) It gives me chills every time I think of it, and makes me cry when I hear it played. I don’t know if it comes through in print, but since you know the Clancy Brothers, you can probably imagine how beautiful it sounds, the incredible poignancy of it. I’ve tried to find out if this is an existing poem, or something they wrote. Are you familiar with this rendition of the song? Do you know? Years ago I wondered if maybe it was Yeats, but I investigated and it’s not.

    I hope this isn’t too off topic. The possibility that another person a) might be familiar with this version of the song and love it as much as I do, and b) might know about the intro, was too enticing to let go. And the Yeats stuff brought it all to mind.

    Sorry for the long post!

    • Aidan says:

      Sheila,
      The poem “Clifden Fair” was penned by Belfast born actor,writer and poet James Henry Cousins (1873 to 1956).
      James Cousins knew and was on first name terms with William Yeats, but alas they were not “best buddies” and on a professional footing
      Yeats was not too fond of Cousin’s input into the Irish National Theatre. This dislike caused a documented split within the Theatre movement and resulted in two thirds of the Theatre movement siding with Cousins.

      You are quite correct, the late great Tommy Makem did recite it on an albumn prior to a rendition of “Carrickfergus”.

      He stumbled home from Clifden fair
      With drunken song, and cheeks aglow.
      Yet there was something in his air
      That told of kingship long ago.
      I sighed and inwardly cried with grief
      That one so high should fall so low.

      But he plucked a flower and sniffed it’s scent,
      And waved it towards the sunset sky.
      Some old sweet rapture through him went
      And kindled in his bloodshot eye.
      I turned and inwardly burned with joy
      That one so low should rise so high.

  3. red says:

    Another Sheila – no need to apologize – I loved reading it.

    Hmmm … my dad might know what that poem is. I’ll ask him.

    I think you’ll enjoy my next post. :) We’re in sync!!

    Yup – the Clancy Brothers were a huge part of my childhood!! I feel so lucky – I have all their albums now, they’re so wonderful.

  4. Patrick says:

    you should have Edith Hamilton’s Mythology on hand as well … so that you can look up all her archaic references which clutter the text,

    I’ve been meaning to read up on the mythology I missed out on in school. You think it would be worth my time?

    All of the bullshit in the earlier poems – the desperation to please, the intellectual suffocation, the lack of ANY ORIGINALITY WHATSOEVER

    Sounds like the spiritual journals I kept in college.

    Let me ask you: is it necessary to read his poems with an Irish accent? I just read “The Host of the Air” twice; once normally and once with a really shitty Irish accent (in my head of course). It was easier to read and sounded better in my head when I read it with an Irish accent. How do you read poems like this?

  5. red says:

    Edith Hamilton’s mythology is great, actually. Really fun, really readable – I say go for it!

    Well, The Host of the Air is definitely meant to be said in an Irish accent – I can hear one of the Clancy brothers now – and the words “And never was piping so sad, and never was piping so gay” just doesn’t sound as good in an American accent.

    Pretty much everything sounds better in an Irish accent to me, though.

  6. jean says:

    those “cloud pale eyes” are such an Irish thing – Mum has them – here entire family has them!

  7. peteb says:

    Well, as he said himself, Sheila.. The Lake Isle of Inishfree “..is the only poem of mine that is very widely known.”

  8. Ken says:

    If you repeat “cloud-pale eyelids” enough, it starts to remind me of Poe’s “Ulalume.”

  9. Jody Tresidder says:

    Sheila/peteb,
    Was just listening to that Poetry Archive recording of Yeats on Sunday and thinking – gloomily – that sometimes the experience doesn’t match your imagination and that he delivers an awful dead-air-in-the-classroom performance. Also, while I love “Lake Isle…”, someone pointed out that “nine bean rows will I plant there” means an INSANE crop of beans for one chap on his own! (I read this titbit in a wonderful novel that skewed a fair number of “nature” poets for not thinking through their images..wish I could remember the novel’s title/author..)

  10. dad says:

    Dearest: apropos of your post on the record albums–I always thought that the early Beatles were just crappy rock n rollers with a lower class British accent. Then Sgt Pepper, like the late Yeats–can’t be beat. love, dad

  11. Nightfly says:

    Lake Isle is nice. But if Yeats could see how often people quote “When You Are Old” he would wish he’d spoken otherwise. You’ll forgive me for saying that I can’t even write claptrap on his level, much less the genius stuff…

    In re: early Beatles, there are nice touches on some of those albums: “Things We Said Today” is as sweet a song as McCartney ever wrote and “Got to Get You Into My Life” is great fun. Lennon had his moments too.

  12. red says:

    Nightfly –

    Oh Jesus, of course. His claptrap is better than something I would work on for 10 years. I’m just sayin’. I find most of the early stuff extremely silly. Like – right now, I am reading The Tower – and … EVERY. SINGLE. POEM. in that volume is … I mean, some of them are now considered the greatest poems of the 20th century. It’s amazing the difference.

    I guess I hold him to a higher standard because of his later accomplishments.

  13. peteb says:

    In defence of Yeats.. or, at least, of the recording he made of The Lake Isle.. it was made in 1932.. it’s not the best quality recording – it’s a bit scratchy – and, as the accompanying text, rather generously says, “The poem, written largely in hexameters, has a tranquil rhythm, something Yeats emphasises in his reading. This is somewhat at odds with more contemporary vocal styles which favour a more conversational tone, but Yeats’ quavering incantation has a unique power of its own.”

    Hmm..

  14. Jody Tresidder says:

    Peteb,
    I am certainly far happier that the recording of Yeats exists than otherwise, with its splendid 1932 crackles: I suppose it’s just that he sounds like every pompous English teacher one ever had who would put on their Extra Special Poetry Reading Voice before launching into yards of the stuff! I was talking to my father about this yesterday and he said Dylan Thomas is another crashingly disappointing declaimer of his own verse – an oddly deep voice yet curiously unmoving (whereas Betjeman – on the same Poetry Archive you linked yesterday – is a fabulous old luvvie pro. And the Tennyson bit was flat out terrifying – authentic spine-tingling Victorian authority.)
    I am generally nuts for later Yeats – but as Sheila says, there’s a lot of early twee to forgive.

  15. red says:

    Yeah, no need to ‘defend’ Yeats to me. He’s one of my favorite poets.

    I’m just commenting that the Celtic spheres stuff that overwhelms his first couple of books is a bit tiresome.

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