"Under Ben Bulben" by W B Yeats (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

Yeats was particular about how his poetry should be read: I'm trying to sound like him. Here's him saying so himself:
• W.B.Yeats Reading His ...
This was from Last Poems and Two Plays, 1939 published in the year of his death.
"Globe-trotting Madam" is I suppose a sideswipe at Maud Gonne: he hardly wrote a poem with fetching her a clip around the ear. Still, as stalkers go, he was relatively harmless, unless she minded being immortalised as a callous, randy, silly bitch.
The rest is the usual pot-pourri of Irish Troubles, fourteenth century art (quattrocento), Rosicrucianism, reincarnation or persistence of the soul, what's wrong with the world and an exhortation to the younger generation of poets to carry on making the same mistakes that he did.
All right now, it's great poem. Will ye be after putting that shillelagh down, Paddy?
A couple of years before Yeats had the Steinach Operation, now called a vasectomy, supposed then to produce physical and mental rejuvenation. "It revived my creative powers" he said. That was more the power of placebo talking, just wishful thinking on his part, unless anybody can show me evidence to the contrary in which case I'll book meself in for the snip next week.
Together with grafting of "monkey glands", total removal of the large bowel (which caused the hapless victim to defecate every few minutes, like a canary) and other strange operations, it was all the rage in the thirties. Freud was "Steinached." If you want to learn more read this article - then click on the name Steinach to download a pdf file.
turekonmenshealth.com/sexual-h...
More information about Ben Bulben
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bulben
I
Swear by what the sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.
Swear by those horsemen, by those women
Complexion and form prove superhuman,
That pale, long-visaged company
That air in immortality
Completeness of their passions won;
Now they ride the wintry dawn
Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.
Here's the gist of what they mean.
II
Many times man lives and dies
Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear
Is the worst man has to fear.
Though grave-digger's toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong,
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.
III
You that Mitchel's prayer have heard,
"Send war in our time, O Lord!"
Know that when all words are said
And a man is fighting mad,
Something drops from eyes long blind,
He completes his partial mind,
For an instant stands at ease,
Laughs aloud, his heart at peace.
Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate,
Know his work or choose his mate.
IV
Poet and sculptor, do the work,
Nor let the modish painter shirk
What his great forefathers did,
Bring the soul of man to God,
Make him fill the cradles right.
Measurement began our might:
Forms a stark Egyptian thought,
Forms that gentler Phidias wrought,
Michael Angelo left proof
On the Sistine Chapel roof,
Where but half-awakened Adam
Can disturb globe-trotting Madam
Till her bowels are in heat,
Proof that there's a purpose set
Before the secret working mind:
Profane perfection of mankind.
Quattrocento put in print
On backgrounds for a God or Saint
Gardens where a soul's at ease;
Where everything that meets the eye,
Flowers and grass and cloudless sky,
Resemble forms that are or seem
When sleepers wake and yet still dream,
And when it's vanished still declare,
With only bed and bedstead there,
That heavens had opened.
Gyres run on;
When that greater dream had gone
Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude,
Prepared a rest for the people of God,
Palmer's phrase, but after that
Confusion fell upon our thought.
Irish poets, learn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after
Porter-drinkers' randy laughter;
Sing the lords and ladies gay
That were beaten into clay
Through seven heroic centuries;
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.
VI
Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

[@user-nc5tx9me5s]

Great Voice, a fitting tribute.

[@niamhserendipity7350]

Caleb Chatfield
One of the last poems Yeats wrote..I've been to his gravestone in County Sligo..thanks for sharing Caleb..a fitting tribute indeed! :-)

[@Idlinfarm]

Thank you for expanding my knowledge and understanding.

[@mauriciomachado7929]

Absolute perfection. Thank you for your work.

[@SpokenVerse]

@thallassocracy I agree. In fact I think the problem was that she was too physical for him: he couldn't cut the mustard.

[@thissong4you]

It was wonderful to revisit today your excellent reading of this marvelous poem. I always enjoy your comments about Yeats and Maude Gonne. Granted, their relationship did not end well in his view, but, oh, the poems he wrote while he was still smitten...."Wine comes in at the mouth/ And, love comes in at the eye;/ That's all we shall know for truth, before we grow old and die./ I lift the glass to my mouth,/ I look at you, and I sigh."

[@robertporter6244]

Thanks for the link to the great man reading his most famous poem.

[@TheSeventhLotus]

Wonderful, thank you.

[@AGlycerineSilkQuorum]

That is an excellent reading felt like Yeats was speaking. Very enjoyable to listen too.

[@GilesConradWatson]

Marvellous reading. You do sound like Yeats, although without too much of the sonorous sing-song quality that makes some of his readings sound rather odd to modern ears. The passage beginning "Irish poets, learn your trade" always gives me agreeable chills - I have a CD of songs adapted from Yeats's poems, and Richard Harris reads this part at the beginning, but your reading is better. I love the pictures of Ben Bulben too.

[@thissong4you]

Boston College Winter Magazine 2001 features an article, "The Last Passions of W.B. Yeats," which addresses Yeats' Steinach procedure and other struggles of his later years. You will probably have to copy and paste this URL to access the article. bcm.bc.edu/issues/winter_2001/ll_yeats.html

[@thallassocracy]

I didn't know Yeats had been Steinached.
In the 1920's the Steinach procedure was part of a set. Women had their clitoris relocated (especially if they were teleclitoridenesic) - a procedure championed by Freud's sidekick Princess Marie Bonaparte:
I can't see anyone talking Maud Gonne into that sort of twattle.