In 1897, the Irish poet and warm-hearted patriot William Butler Yeats spent his first summer at Coole, away from the bitter noise of political strife, and away from the woman closest to him who embodied that strife, Maud Gonne. He had proposed marriage to her, and she turned him down, because, as she said, she had to be in the middle of things, while the poet — certainly as great a lover of Ireland as she was — felt that it was no good trade to stifle your soul for political revolution. You may give up your life to your country, and Yeats would go on to memorialize men who did so, even his bitterest enemy, Major John MacBride, whom Maud married. But you must not give up your soul.
In the meantime, Yeats had met the widow Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, herself a considerable author and researcher into Irish antiquities. Every Irishman who aspired to be known in the world of letters came within her happy sphere of influence. So Yeats, deeply unhappy, went to Lady Gregory’s estate at Coole, in County Galway, to be at peace and to write. Galway is in the west of Ireland, away from Dublin in the east. Most people in Galway then spoke Irish, and to this day it is one of the regions where the language is still healthy. The landscape isn’t mountainous, but it is rugged, rather like what I’ve seen on the southwestern coast of Italy — what you get when carbonate in the underlying rocks is partly dissolved; fissures and crevices, ravines and outcrops; in Galway, mostly covered with the green grass, but sometimes with clear and not muddy water, which sinks back into the earth in the dry seasons. At Coole there were seven woods, and Yeats liked to wander in them, and hence our Poem of the Week, the title poem in the book he published in 1903, “In the Seven Woods.” The wood that’s mentioned here is Parc-na-lee, or “Calf Park” — in Irish, Pairc-na-laoigh. If you go there, you may see a big copper beech tree — beeches are the best trees for carving your name on, and it’s no accident that the English words beech and book are siblings, even fraternal twins. On that tree you can find the names of many Irish authors, and among them is today’s W. B. Yeats.
I’m looking at a copy of Yeats’ volume, published in 1903 by the small press he, his sister Elizabeth, and their friend Evelyn Gleeson established, Dun Emer — that is, Emer’s Bluff. Emer (modern Irish Eimhear) was the wife of the mythical hero of Irish legend, Cu Chulainn, literally Cullen’s Dog, not a lap-dog but a ferocious and loyal dog, so his name means Cullen’s Warrior or the Cullen-Warrior. At the top of the page where this first poem appears, these words appear all in red capitals: “IN THE SEVEN WOODS: BEING POEMS CHIEFLY OF THE IRISH HEROIC AGE.” So we shouldn’t be surprised that the title poem takes us away from current strife, but not to a nostalgic hideaway. It’s not a retreat that the poet is on, but a return, a return to that heroic past. The heroism, too, is not gone forever. It bides its time, he suggests. And he would be right about that, after all. The Irish would rise up and win their independence, and Yeats would live to see it.
A couple of things to help you out with this short poem. It’s written in a loose blank verse, that is, unrhymed iambic pentameter. The “new commonness” on the throne is surely Edward VII of England, who succeeded his mother Queen Victoria at her death in 1901; the poem itself is dated August, 1902. “Tara” again is the royal site of the ancient Irish kings: that is where Saint Patrick himself went to speak to King Lóegaire, and eventually won him over, whether the king encouraged him to preach, or became himself a follower of Christ. The paper flowers on the lampposts in the city streets are pretty paltry by comparison with the blossoms on the lime trees — those are linden trees, with their abundance of tiny white and green flowers when they are in bloom. The scent is powerful and pleasant, and the bees love them, and they make for great honey. The word linden was originally an adjective, from the noun lind, as in the old-fashioned adjectives oaken, beechen, and birchen. And who is the Great Archer? Yeats doesn’t help us here. We may think of God, but we may also think of the zodiacal sign Sagittarius, that is, the Archer: the constellation would be easily seen in the southern sky in spring, rising shortly after dark, though at Ireland’s latitude it would be low in the sky, so you can imagine that bowman aiming his arrow right down at Ireland. He’s got a “cloudy quiver,” because you can see a part of the Milky Way within the constellation and nearby.
But, all that said, it’s best to hear the poem, lovely and mysterious as it is, and let your imagination take over.
I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees Hum in the lime tree flowers; and put away The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile Tara uprooted, and new commonness Upon the throne and crying about the streets And hanging its paper flowers from post to post, Because it is alone of all things happy. I am contented for I know that Quiet Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer, Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs A cloudy quiver over Parc-na-Lee.
Word & Song is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. To support this work, please join us as a subscriber.
We think of our archive as a little treasure trove. Our paid subscribers have on demand access to the entire of Word & Song, many hundreds of entries. For everyone else, there’s always plenty to see here, as well. We hope that all of our readers will revisit and share our posts with others as we continue our mission of reclaiming — one thing at a time — the good, the beautiful, and the true.
