The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #793   Message #2594
Posted By: Jerry Friedman, jfriedman@nnm.cc.nm.us
26-Feb-97 - 06:23 PM
Thread Name: Songs of Faery / Fairy / Fairies
Subject: Lyr Add: THE FAERIES DANCE^^
People who are reading this thread might like the following Web site: .

One song that isn't on it and that I couldn't find on the Web is by Yeats, from his play The Land of Heart's Desire. Here's how it appears in Modern British Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer.

The wind blows out of the gates of the day,
The wind blows over the lonely of heart,
And the lonely of heart is withered away,
While the faeries dance in a place apart,
Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring,
Tossing their milk-white arms in the air:
For they hear the wind laugh, and murmur and sing
Of a land where even the old are fair,
And even the wise are merry of tongue;
But I heard a reed of Coolaney say,
"When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung,
The lonely of heart is withered away!"

Speaking of Yeats, you can find his collected poetry (from the poetry books but not the plays) at and , among other places. The noble maintainers of the DT might want to look there for the correct texts of "The Song of Wandering Aengus" and "And Old Song Resung" (="Sally Gardens"), or at least provide links in case people want to see the poems as Yeats wrote them as well as the way people have sung them. Or I could e-mail the poems if you want.