Here in Yeats Week, in honor of William Butler Yeats’s June 13 birthday, the Sun has noted the different modes of Yeats’s work, the different masks he would assume: the romantic poet, the pre-Raphaelite poet, and even the political poet. There’s yet another Yeats worth noting — the knowing one, maybe even too knowing, gazing down on young and old alike. In “The Scholars,” from his 1919 book “The Wild Swans at Coole,” Yeats gives a 12-line tetrameter poem, rhymed ababcc–dedeff, that mildly mocks old scholars for their pedantry in editing the Latin lines of young poets: Lord, what would they say / Did their Catullus walk that way? And even sneers a little at those young poets who Rhymed out in love’s despair / To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.The Scholarsby William Butler YeatsBald heads forgetful of their sins,Old, learned, respectable bald headsEdit and annotate the linesThat young men, tossing on their beds,Rhymed out in love’s despairTo flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.All shuffle there; all cough in ink;All wear the carpet with their shoes;All think what other people think;All know the man their neighbour knows.Lord, what would they sayDid their Catullus walk that way?___________________________________________ 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.
