"Song of the Old Mother" is a poem by William Butler Yeats that first appeared in The Wind Among the Reeds anthology, published in 1899. The poem echoes Yeats' fascination with the Irish peasantry.
Written in first person, the poem explains the difficult chores and struggles of an aged, unfortunate woman and her bitter resentment to the young children, whose worries of fondness and personal appearance pale to insignificance when compared to the toils of the old woman.
There is some confusion whether the term "mother" should be taken literally, or if it refers to old women in general. The subject of the poem is in fact a maid of some kind[citation needed], employed in a wealthy household. This would increase the resentment she feels, experiencing almost abject jealousy of not having the option to live that kind of life.
The poem has a convenient form; ten lines in length with each line holding four stresses. It is almost like a confining grid, emphasizing the Old Mother's unbending existence. There is a clear rhyming scheme of couplets, with a nice half rhyme towards the end which rounds the poem off properly.
In the poem, the fire the Old Mother lights in the morning is meant to represent the Old Mother herself, waking up when the fire is blown, and resting when the fire grows both "cold" and "feeble".
The rhyming style of the poem represents that of childish songs and nursery rhymes. The simplicity touches the reader. The poem is not a glorified message on the human condition, merely an Old Mother's views, possibly never expressed in real life. Perhaps these views are invalid because her viewpoint is heavily biased. Maybe if the Old Mother looked back at her own youth, she would discover what a silly young thing she was as well. The word choice of "must" in the penultimate line suggests that the old mother had no choice, she had to work, had to "scrub, bake and sweep".
Poem:
I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; And the young lie long and dream in their bed Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head, And their days go over in idleness, And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress: While I must work because I am old, And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.
William Butler Yeats was an English-language Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of the Irish literary establishment, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others.
The Wanderings of Oisin is an epic poem published by William Butler Yeats in 1889 in the book The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. It was his first publication outside magazines, and immediately won him a reputation as a significant poet. This narrative poem takes the form of a dialogue between the aged Irish hero Oisín and St. Patrick, the man traditionally responsible for converting Ireland to Christianity. Most of the poem is spoken by Oisin, relating his three-hundred year sojourn in the isles of Faerie. Oisin has not been a popular poem with critics influenced by modernism, who dislike its pre-Raphaelite character. However, Harold Bloom defended this poem in his book-length study of Yeats, and concludes that it deserves reconsideration.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American author and poet. Her works include Poems of Passion and Solitude, which contains the lines "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone." Her autobiography, The Worlds and I, was published in 1918, a year before her death.
Brian Merriman or in Irish Brian Mac Giolla Meidhre was an Irish language Bard, farmer, and hedge school teacher from rural County Clare. His single surviving work of substance, the 1000-line long Cúirt An Mheán Oíche, is often compared to the works of François Rabelais. It is widely regarded as the greatest work of comic verse in the history of Irish poetry.
Yerma[ˈɟ͡ʝerma] is a play by the Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. It was written in 1934 and first performed that same year. García Lorca describes the play as "a tragic poem." The play tells the story of a childless woman living in rural Spain. Her desperate desire for motherhood becomes an obsession that eventually drives her to commit a horrific crime.
In the Seven Woods: Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age is a volume of poems by W. B. Yeats, published in 1903 by Elizabeth Yeats's Dun Emer Press, the first edited by this publishing house.
Kathleen Ni Houlihan is a mythical symbol and emblem of Irish nationalism found in literature and art, sometimes representing Ireland as a personified woman. The figure of Kathleen Ni Houlihan has also been invoked in nationalist Irish politics. Kathleen Ni Houlihan is sometimes spelled as Cathleen Ni Houlihan, and the figure is also sometimes referred to as the Sean-Bhean Bhocht, the Poor Old Woman, and similar appellations. Kathleen Ni Houlihan is generally depicted as an old woman who needs the help of young Irish men willing to fight and die to free Ireland from colonial rule, usually resulting in the young men becoming martyrs for this cause. In the days before the Anglo-Irish War, the colonial power was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. After the Anglo-Irish War, Kathleen Ni Houlihan was a figure more associated with the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, especially during the Troubles.
Adam's Curse is a poem written by William Butler Yeats. In the poem, Yeats describes the difficulty of creating something beautiful. The title alludes to the book of Genesis, evoking the fall of man and the separation of work and pleasure. Yeats originally included the poem in the volume In the Seven Woods, published in 1903.
"Sailing to Byzantium" is a poem by William Butler Yeats, first published in the 1928 collection The Tower. It comprises four stanzas in ottava rima, each made up of eight lines of iambic pentameter. It uses a journey to Byzantium (Constantinople) as a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Yeats explores his thoughts and musings on how immortality, art, and the human spirit may converge. Through the use of various poetic techniques, Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" describes the metaphorical journey of a man pursuing his own vision of eternal life as well as his conception of paradise.
"A Prayer for my Daughter" is a poem by William Butler Yeats written in 1919 and published in 1921 as part of Yeats' collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer. It is written to Anne, his daughter with Georgie Hyde Lees, whom Yeats married after his last marriage proposal to Maud Gonne was rejected in 1916. Yeats wrote the poem while staying in a tower at Thoor Ballylee during the Anglo-Irish War, two days after Anne's birth on 26 February 1919. The poem reflects Yeats's complicated views on Irish Nationalism, sexuality, and is considered an important work of Modernist poetry.
"Down by the Salley Gardens" is a poem by William Butler Yeats published in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems in 1889.
Michael J Moran, popularly known as Zozimus, was an Irish street rhymer. He was a resident of Dublin and also known as the "Blind Bard of the Liberties" and the "Last of the Gleemen".
"The Wild Swans at Coole" is a lyric poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939). Written between 1916 and early 1917, the poem was first published in the June 1917 issue of the Little Review, and became the title poem in the Yeats's 1917 and 1919 collections The Wild Swans at Coole.
"Little Orphant Annie" is an 1885 poem written by James Whitcomb Riley and published by the Bowen-Merrill Company. First titled "The Elf Child", the name was changed by Riley to "Little Orphant Allie" at its third printing; however, a typesetting error during printing renamed the poem to its current form. Known as the "Hoosier poet", Riley wrote the rhymes in 19th-century Hoosier dialect. As one of his most well known poems, it served as the inspiration for the comic strip Little Orphan Annie which itself inspired a Broadway musical, several films, and many radio and television programs.
"Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" is a poem by William Butler Yeats. It was published in 1899 in his third volume of poetry, The Wind Among the Reeds.
Olivia Shakespear was a British novelist, playwright, and patron of the arts. She wrote six books that are described as "marriage problem" novels. Her works sold poorly, sometimes only a few hundred copies. Her last novel, Uncle Hilary, is considered her best. She wrote two plays in collaboration with Florence Farr.
Richard Faith was an American composer who has been known primarily in university music circles as a concert pianist, professor of piano, and a published composer of piano pedagogy literature, orchestral and chamber works, opera and most prolifically, song. A neo-romantic, Faith has always been first and foremost a melodist.
"September 1913" is a poem by W. B. Yeats. The poem was written midway through his life as a highly reflective poem which is rooted within the turbulent past. Most notably, the poem provides insight into Yeats' detestation of the middle classes whilst also glorifying figures such as John O'Leary.
"The Song of Wandering Aengus" is a poem by Irish poet W. B. Yeats. It was first printed in 1897 in British magazine The Sketch under the title "A Mad Song." It was then published under its standard name in Yeats' 1899 anthology The Wind Among the Reeds. It is especially remembered for its two final lines: "The silver apples of the moon,/ The golden apples of the sun."
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
