{"id":3996,"date":"2005-12-06T11:49:15","date_gmt":"2005-12-06T16:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3996"},"modified":"2020-11-16T09:37:11","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T14:37:11","slug":"again-with-the-cloud-pale-eyelids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3996","title":{"rendered":"Again With the Cloud-Pale Eyelids, Yeats?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am now reading The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats<\/a>\"\"<\/i> I have my own personal favorites in the bunch – but I’ve never sat down and read them ALL straight through.<\/p>\n

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<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that’s what I’m doing with Yeats right now.<\/p>\n

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

And the green tree bends over the pagan fields
\nAnd the twinkly old eyes by the fireside laugh
\nThe ghosts of yore dance a jig in the flames
\nAnd I, And I …
\nI succumb to the music of the spheres.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Also: the phrase “her cloud-pale eyelids” appears pretty much in every single one of the early poems.<\/p>\n

“I kiss her cloud-pale eyelids …”
\n“Her long hair drapes over her cloud-pale eyelids”
\n“With her flaming tresses and her cloud-pale eyelids …”<\/p>\n

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

It’s a nice image, actually – “cloud-pale eyelids” – but … only sparingly!<\/p>\n

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<\/i> 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:)<\/p>\n

O’Driscoll drove with a song
\nThe wild duck and the drake
\nFrom the tall and the tufted reeds
\nOf the drear Heart Lake.<\/p>\n

And he saw how the reeds grew dark
\nAt the coming of night-tide,
\nAnd dreamed of the long dim hair
\nOf Bridget his bride.<\/p>\n

He heard while he sang and dreamed
\nA piper piping away,
\nAnd never was piping so sad,
\nAnd never was piping so gay.<\/p>\n

And he saw young men and young girls
\nWho danced on a level place,
\nAnd Bridget his bride among them,
\nWith a sad and a gay face.<\/p>\n

The dancers crowded about him
\nAnd many a sweet thing said,
\nAnd a young man brought him red wine
\nAnd a young girl white bread.<\/p>\n

But Bridget drew him by the sleeve
\nAway from the merry bands,
\nTo old men playing at cards
\nWith a twinkling of ancient hands.<\/p>\n

The bread and the wine had a doom,
\nFor these were the host of the air;
\nHe sat and played in a dream
\nOf her long dim hair.<\/p>\n

He played with the merry old men
\nAnd thought not of evil chance,
\nUntil one bore Bridget his bride
\nAway from the merry dance.<\/p>\n

He bore her away in his arms,
\nThe handsomest young man there,
\nAnd his neck and his breast and his arms
\nWere drowned in her long dim hair.<\/p>\n

O’Driscoll scattered the cards
\nAnd out of his dream awoke:
\nOld men and young men and young girls
\nWere gone like a drifting smoke;<\/p>\n

But he heard high up in the air
\nA piper piping away,
\nAnd never was piping so sad,
\nAnd never was piping so gay.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

Most of the early stuff is pretty terrible. However – reading through it makes his later genius all the much more startling!<\/p>\n

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