CURRENT MOON

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Many Happy Returns, Mr. Yeats.


Happy birthday, William Butler Yeats
Wiki says that: Recalling his childhood, he described his "one unshakable belief" as "whatever of philosophy has been made poetry is alone permanent... I thought... that if a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world."

Wiki also reminds us that: Yeats was admitted into the "Golden Dawn" in March 1890, taking the magical motto Daemon est Deus inversus translated as Devil is God inverted or A demon is a god reflected. He was an active recruiter for the Golden Dawn's Isis-Urania temple, and brought in his uncle George Pollexfen, Maud Gonne, and Florence Farr. He became involved in the Order's power-struggles both with Farr on one hand, and with Macgregor Mathers on the other, most notably when Mathers sent Aleister Crowley to repossess Golden Dawn paraphernalia in "the Battle of Blythe Road". After the Golden Dawn ceased to be and splintered into various offshoots, he remained with the Stella Matutina until 1921.

I love his poem, "Unworthy Praise":

O HEART, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What’s not for their applause,
Being for a woman’s sake.
Enough if the work has seemed,
So did she your strength renew,
A dream that a lion had dreamed
Till the wilderness cried aloud,
A secret between you two,
Between the proud and the proud.
What, still you would have their praise!
But here’s a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed;
And how what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these.
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.


And, one has to love a man who loved a woman named Maud, one of my all-time favorite names, and her a revolutionary, besides. With a daughter named Iseulet.

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