Valentine's Day Love Poems: The Song of Wandering Aengus

Ah, the month of love!

I asked friends to send me their favorite love poems, and the first to arrive was this one, an Irish classic.

Aengus was, they say adescendant of the Tuatha De Dannan, the mythical people of Ireland's past. He was a god of love, youth and beauty. In the old stories he falls in love with a girl from one of his dreams, and it is on this bit of from the myth that Yeats based his famous poem.

 The Song of Wandering Aengus

By William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

~William Butler Yeats

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.