Page 375 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes May well be of all evil chances chief.

If there’s no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of plenty’s horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?
Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all’s accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), the celebrated Irish poet, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1923, needs no introduction. The Irish identity was very strong in him and as an active member of
the Irish National Revival; he tried his best to add Celtic legends to evoke the glorious past of his
land. In a time when the world was much fragmented, he endeavored to create a unified perspective
of things that is cohesive and all encompassing.

The poem is an intense expression of how Yeats felt after his daughter Anne was born
although the ideas conveyed go far beyond the personal.

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