Ah, What the Hell, A Couple More Awesome Things!

Another word cloud! Of this blog. Woot woot! Click for bigger! I don't know why "one" is showing up so prominently (nor "God," come to think of it) but I think the fact that "like" enjoys the same prominence here as it did in my earlier word cloud ought to say something about my use of the English language. Also, another couple of fantastic poems. These are both by Yeats, who you don't need me to tell you was a master. Despite being from an Anglo-Irish family in the 1860s ... uh okay, quick detour for a history lesson: Ireland was still under British colonial rule in the late 1800s (til 1921, actually), and England, being Protestant, had for several centuries enforced laws barring Roman Catholics from positions of power. Thus most of the ruling/wealthy/upper classes of Irish society were Protestant (and of originally British descent); they were called the Anglo-Irish and were viewed by much of Ireland as the enemy in much of the Home Rule movement (i.e., the movement for a separate Irish republic) troubles to follow. Anyway. So despite being from a wealthy Anglo-Irish family, Yeats was extremely involved in the Irish Literary Revival in the fin de siecle, which was concerned with reclaiming "Irish identity" in the form of the Gaelic tongue and Celtic mythology (of which, by the way, he knew none. He would mispronounce the name of Ireland's greatest mythological hero, Cuchulain, for like 8 years before somebody corrected him). Much of his early work is deeply concerned with Irish identity: the reclamation of Irish legend (any of his Cuchulain or faerie host poems; "The Rose of the World," etc), the terrible events of Irish colonial history (possibly his most famous poem, "Easter 1916," is about the Easter Rising against the English), and his own distraught and distressing relationship with the famous Maude Gonne, an actress and fellow Revivalist (he pined after her for like 30 years, and proposed multiple times to both her ... and her daughter. Ew). A lot of his stuff from this time period is basically impossible to understand without knowing the context of Irish history and myth, and a lot of it is ... well, in very vaulted, perhaps overblown language. The power of some of it is impossible to deny, though, even if you don't quite understand it (like "Easter 1916," "The Song of Wandering Aegnus," "Leda and the Swan," "The Circus Animals' Desertion," and the intense, disturbing "Second Coming," among others). BUT. In his later years, he produced many poems which are shorter and less elaborate, and which speak to what are perhaps more universal human truths: determination and triumph; longing and regret and sorrow; the bitterness of experience and the sweet naivete of youthful hope. Here are two of my favorites. Two Years Later Has no one said those daring Kind eyes should be more learn'd? Or warned you how despairing The moths are when they are burned? I could have warned you; but you are young, So we speak a different tongue. O you will take whatever's offered And dream that all the world's a friend, Suffer as your mother suffered, Be as broken in the end. But I am old and you are young, And I speak a barbarous tongue. To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing Now all the truth is out Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honor-bred, with one Who, were it known he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbours' eyes? Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn away And like a laughing string Whereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone, Be secret, and exult: Because of all things known That is most difficult.