Poem of the Day: ‘Down by the Salley Gardens’

To conclude the Sun’s celebration of William Butler Yeats this week, we return to the nascence of his poetic career. In 1889, the year his first full-length book, “The Wanderings of Oisin,” appeared, the twenty-four-year-old Yeats was living in London, steeping in the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite poets even while he studied Irish folklore. Today’s poem, “Down by the Salley Gardens,” suggests the Pre-Raphaelite impulse to recapture, or to recreate in improved form, something ancient. Yeats’s own note on this poem indicates that it represents his attempt to remember an old song, “from three lines imperfectly remembered” as they had been sung “by an old peasant woman.” The poem’s overall effect, like that of Tuesday’s selection, “The Song of Wandering Aengus,” is not exactly the suggestion of a replicated artifact — the poetic equivalent of a resin model of the Rosetta Stone — but of an entity synthesized out of actual artifacts whose very existence in tradition extends the patina of antiquity to the new thing. Set most popularly to an old tune, “The Maids of Mourne Shore,” “Down by the Salley Gardens” has long been and remains a repertoire standard for singers. It is both like and unlike every traditional ballad that begins with a lovers’ meeting and ends in murder. Yet “Down by the Salley Gardens,” in two trimeter octets, does not end in murder, only tears. Down by the Salley Gardens by William Butler Yeats Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘Down by the Salley Gardens’

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