Happy Birthday, Mr. Yeats!

On this day in 1865, William Butler Yeats was born. That makes today the 154th anniversary of his birth. There's a British-Irish folk rock band, The Waterboys, that's recorded a number of Yeats' poems put to music. There's a CD titled An Appointment With Mr. Yeats, which we've been enthralled by listening to for a few years now.

We find ourselves intrigued that Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, although none of his poems, that we know of, served as lyrics until Mike Scott of the Waterboys created the songs for "An Appointment." Conversely, The Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 was awarded to Bob Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." Dylan's poems are all lyrics. We find Dylan's words as representative of American culture as Yeats are of Irish culture. Try listening to "An Appointment" and to "Highway 61 Revisited" in sequence and see if you find other similarities .

The Song of Wandering Aengus

By William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

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