Saturday 1 March 2008

Stolen Child - WB Yeats - Loreena McKennitt




Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

Where dips the rocky highland
of Sleuth Wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
there we've hid our faery vats
Full of berries
and of reddest stolen cherries

Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
the dim gray sands with light
Far off by furthest Rosses
we foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
to and fro we leap
ANd chase the frothy bubbles
while the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep

Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

Where the wandering water gushes
from the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes
the scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout
and whispering in their ears
We give them unquiet dreams;
leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
over the young streams

Away with us he's going
the solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
of the calves on the warm hillside;
Or the kettle on the hob
sing peace into his breast
Or see the brown mice bob
around and around the oatmeal-chest

For he comes, the human child
to the water
He comes, the human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
from a world more full of weeping than he can understand
Human child
human child
With a faery, hand in hand
from a world more full of weeping than he can understand...
than he can understand...
he can understand




StumbleUpon My StumbleUpon Page





Tuesday 26 February 2008

W.B.Yeats Under Ben Bulben and Jealousy




Here is Yeats read by Michael MacLiammoir. This is as near perfect a rendition as I have heard. The voice is clear and varying in pitch throughout, rising and falling with the wave of the verse. Uncle Mac makes every word count and when he says 'sing' he makes the word sound like what it signifies. Magnificent!









Here a discussion between a yank and englishman and an irishman. Orson Wells, Hilton Edwards and Michael MacLiammoir.






Shakespeare Orson Wells and Puritanims "Othello"






A terrible beauty is born


We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse --
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

-- William Butler Yeats.





StumbleUpon My StumbleUpon Page