The Poetry of Yeats - 5 - Chris Curran et alia torrent

Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree,
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.

Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny;
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.


There's not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory;
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.

...according to Yeats the translation into verse of the very words of an old Wicklow peasant, but also of course his and our instinctive doggedness.

Argo PLP 1056 from 1970 - Chris Curran, Arthur O’Sullivan, Jim Norton and Sheila Manahan. If you like Yeats you will like this. I add from Spoken Arts SAC 8044, four poems read by Siobhan McKenna and about fifteen minutes of all that survives on audio of the poet himself. Kindly seed