Happy Birthday W.B. Yeats

It's W.B. Yeats' birthday today and when I got in touch with him earlier to wish him a happy birthday he seemed a little grumpy. He told me to say that he was very disappointed that Irish poets had not taken his advice:

Irish poets, earn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,

He said that in his opinion things have got much worse, all poetry now seems to be out of shape.

He also told me to remind people that the “terrible” is as important as the “beauty” in his poem Easter 1916.

He wants this poem read on his birthday because he’s proud of the shape, the rhythm, the rhyme scheme, the refrain, the contrary sentiments and the clever way he revisited the theme of tower.
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It’s from his “Last Poems”, one of the last poems he wrote, possibly the very last one.

The Black Tower

Say that the men of the old black tower,
Though they but feed as the goatherd feeds,
Their money spent, their wine gone sour,
Lack nothing that a soldier needs,
That all are oath-bound men:
Those banners come not in.

There in the tomb stand the dead upright,
But winds come up from the shore:
They shake when the winds roar,
Old bones upon the mountain shake.

Those banners come to bribe or threaten,
Or whisper that a man’s a fool
Who, when his own right king’s forgotten,
Cares what king sets up his rule.
If he died long ago
Why do you dread us so?

There in the tomb drops the faint moonlight,
But wind comes up from the shore:
They shake when the winds roar,
Old bones upon the mountain shake.

The tower’s old cook that must climb and clamber
Catching small birds in the dew of the morn
When we hale men lie stretched in slumber
Swears that he hears the king’s great horn.
But he’s a lying hound:
Stand we on guard oath-bound!

There in the tomb the dark grows blacker,
But wind comes up from the shore:
They shake when the winds roar,
Old bones upon the mountain shake.