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April 26: W. B. Yeats’s “Down by the Salley Gardens”
From the newly published Irish Poems, a love song by Yeats, based on an old ballad. (Don’t miss the video link below: Irish author Maeve Binchy picked one of her favorites in the collection, Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-term Break,” to read aloud.)
Down by the Salley Gardens
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little
snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow
on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would
not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her
snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows
on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
Learn more about Irish Poems
Video Feature: Maeve Binchy reading “Mid-term Break”
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7 Responses to “April 26: W. B. Yeats’s “Down by the Salley Gardens””
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Knopf's Poem-A-Day 2011
April 1: The opening lines of Amy Tan's "I Love a Broad Margin"April 2: Philip Levine's "Unholy Saturday"
April 3: Deborah Digges's "The Coat"
April 4: David Young's "The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon"
April 5: W.S. Merwin's "The Folding Cliffs"
April 6: Cynthia Zarin's "Late Poem"
April 7: Leonard Cohen's "These Heroics"
April 8: Marge Piercy's "Wellfleet Shabbat"
April 9: Anthony Hecht's "Devotions of a Painter"
April 10: Emily Dickinson Letters
April 11: Kevin Young's "Ash Wednesday"
April 12: Edward Hirsch's "Happiness Writes White"
April 13: Amy Clampitt's "Green"
April 14: Walt Whitman's "The Artilleryman’s Vision"
April 15: Wallace Stevens's "A Dove in the Belly"
April 16: James Merrill's "The Candid Decorator"
April 17: Emily Brontë's "No coward soul is mine"
April 18: Julia Hartwig's "Yet We Desire It above All"
April 19: Kenneth Koch's "To My Fifties"
April 20: Stephen Sondheim's "Green Finch and Linnet Bird"
April 21: Stan Rice's "Tornado at Night"
April 22: Kwon Homun's "Two Poems On Fishing"
April 23: Franz Wright's "Rooms"
April 24: Brooks Haxton’s “Three Lilies”
April 25: C.P. Cavafy's "The Mirror in the Entrance"
April 26: W. B. Yeats's "Down by the Salley Gardens"
April 27: Peter Davison's "The Level Path"
April 28: Sharon Olds's "True Love"
April 29: Langston Hughes's "Daybreak in Alabama"
April 30: Farewell, with poems by Jane Hirshfield and Simon Armitage
Knopf's Poem-A-Day 2010
April 1: Edward Hirsch’s “Self-portrait”April 2: Marge Piercy’s “Seven Horses”
April 3: Dan Chiasson’s “Banquette” and “Next”
April 4: Marie Ponsot’s “Transport”
April 5: Alexander Neubauer’s Poetry in Person, featuring Derek Walcott
April 6: Mark Strand’s “Mirror”
April 7: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Spring”
April 8: Philip Levine’s “MY FATHERS, THE BALTIC”
April 9: Vera Pavlova’s “A Remedy for Insomnia”
April 10: Stan Rice’s “The Fragment of Statue”
April 11: Marina Tsvetayeva’s “Poems Grow”
April 12: Kevin Young’s “EYES + EGGS [1983]“
April 13: Janusz Szuber’s “About a Boy Stirring Jam”
April 14: Frank O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”
April 15: Franz Wright’s "My Pew"
April 16: Mary Jo Salter’s “Welcome to Hiroshima”
April 17: Yehuda Halevi’s “A man in your fifties—and you still would be young?”
April 18: Langston Hughes’s “Black Workers” and “Black Dancers”
April 19: W. S. Di Piero’s “In Our Room”
April 20: Robert Wrigley’s “Kissing a Horse”
April 21: Sharon Olds’s “When He Came for the Family” and “The Signal”
April 22: Irving Feldman’s “Stretched Out at Length”
April 23: W.S. Merwin’s “The Furrow”
April 24: David Lehman’s “Poem in the Manner of a Jazz Standard”
April 25: John Keats’s “This Living Hand”
April 26: Laurie Sheck’s A Monster’s Notes
April 27: Garrett Hongo’s “Volcano House”
April 28: Wallace Stevens’s “Large Red Man Reading”
April 29: Izumi Shikibu’s love poems
April 30: Deborah Digges's "Write a Book a Year"
Knopf's Poem-a-Day 2009
April 1: Half Moon, Small Cloud by John UpdikeApril 2: Going Back to Bed by J.D. McClatchy
April 3: Like Giving to a Blind Man Eyes by Ruth Padel
April 4: Waiting On Elvis, 1956 by Joyce Carol Oates
April 5: Exile’s Child by D. Nurkse
April 6: A Summer Outing by Du Fu
April 7: Touch-Me-Nots by Jill Bialosky
April 8: Sweet Voices and Voices by C.P. Cavafy
April 9: On the Jetty by C.P. Cavafy
April 10: Fragment on Dissembling by Lucie Brock-Broido
April 11: Page From the Koran by James Merrill
April 12: Spring Song II by Jean Garrigue
April 13: Ode to Pepper Vinegar by Kevin Young
April 14: Greeter of Souls by Deborah Digges
April 15: You’re Beautiful by Simon Armitage
April 16: Two Short Poems by Mark Strand
April 17: To See My Mother by Sharon Olds
April 18: Wallace Stevens and Donald Justice
April 19: Robert Lowell’s Poetry Class by Stephanie Hemphill
April 20: Storm by Brooks Haxton
April 21: A Good List by Brad Leithauser
April 22: The Pond by Jim Powell
April 23: Impressions of Africa by Kenneth Koch
April 24: Notes For Sixtieth Wedding Anniversary by Jane Mayhall
April 25: Some Playthings by John Hollander
April 26: There is No City that Does Not Dream by Anne Michaels
April 27: Description of Her Eyes by Franz Wright
April 28: Some Different Kinda Books by Sapphire
April 29: The Mistake by Jack Gilbert
April 30: Creeper and Fine Point by John Updike
May 1: Written Late at Night by Janusz Szuber
If one wanted an example of how a poem can be at once utterly conventional and utterly fresh, this would be it.
So, Mr Sondheim, the poet Yeast was also a song lyricist. And the great Homer may have sung his poems. I first heard this as a song and learned to sing it myself, and have performed it, with an accompaniment composed by Benjamin Britten. It was sung and recorded by Peter Pears. Anyone who has never heard it has a treat in store. Imagine, one of the great poets of the 20th century writing a great song lyric.
W. B. Yeats’s “Down by the Salley Gardens,” expresses regret, something I believe, is not necessary. His stillness as a writer, captures the essence of regret, bringing the reader to this place of experience as it is lived.
The similarity of this to Housman’s “When I Was One-and-twenty” is striking. Besides the obvious similarity in subject, the meter and rhyme schemes are nearly identical. And the common subject matter leads in both to a striking grammatical device: a shift at the very conclusion from past to present tense as the mood switches from tension to sad resolution. I wonder if either was inspired by the other, or both from common folk sources.
W. B. Yeats’ “Down by the Salley Gardens,” shows how opening ideas and a satisfying close can build a well-structured poem/song.
It also highlights a couple of my irksome traits; never listening, and not learning until it is too late.
R.L.L.
I totally agree with R. L. Lyons about the poetry, but I think he’s too pessimistic (and too hard on himself) about “until it is too late”. A more realistic assessment might be that there are some things that have to be learned the hard way, but they do get learned.
Now I remember. I first heard Down by the Salley Gardens sung by the great English contralto Kathleen Ferrier. The recordings of Ferrier may still be available. I fell in love with both the song and the voice. I consider her one of the great voices of the 20th century. Her greatest recording is of Mahler’s Kindertoten Lieder, which I own. Ferrier died young, but her legend is very much alive.