'The Wanderings of Oisin: Book III' by William Butler Yeats

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The Wanderings of Oisin1889Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke,
High as the Saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide;
And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance broke;
The immortal desire of Immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair,
And never a song sang Niamh, and over my finger-tips
Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair,
And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.Were we days long or hours long in riding, when, rolled in a grisly peace,
An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?
And we stood on a sea's edge we saw not; for whiter than new-washed fleece
Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke.And we rode on the plains of the sea's edge; the sea's edge barren and grey,
Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,
Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away,
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling bark;
Dropping; a murmurous dropping; old silence and that one sound;
For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark:
Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night,
For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world and the sun,
Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light,
And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one.Till the horse gave a whinny; for, cumbrous with stems of the hazel and oak,
A valley flowed down from his hoofs, and there in the long grass lay,
Under the starlight and shadow, a monstrous slumbering folk,
Their naked and gleaming bodies poured out and heaped in the way.And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and blade;
And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years old
Could sleep on a couch of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid,
And more comely than man can make them with bronze and silver and gold.And each of the huge white creatures was huger than fourscore men;
The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands were the claws of birds,
And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of the mural glen,
The breathing came from those bodies, long warless, grown whiter than curds.The wood was so Spacious above them, that He who has stars for His flocks
Could fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His dew-cumbered skies;
So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nests in their locks,
Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes.And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and came,
Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow-place wide;
And the chief of the huge white creatures, his knees in the soft star-flame,
Lay loose in a place of shadow:we drew the reins by his side.Golden the nails of his bird-clawS, flung loosely along the dim ground;
In one was a branch soft-shining with bells more many than sighs
In midst of an old man's bosom; owls ruffling and pacing around
Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes.And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers; no, not since the world began,
In realms where the handsome were many, nor in glamours by demons flung,
Have faces alive with such beauty been known to the salt eye of man,
Yet weary with passions that faded when the sevenfold seas were young.And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep's forebear, far sung by the Sennachies.
I saw how those slumbererS, grown weary, there camping in grasses deep,
Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the wandering seas,
Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of unhuman sleep.Snatching the horn of Niamh, I blew a long lingering note.
Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like the stirring of flies.
He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of his throat,
Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes.I cried, 'Come out of the shadow, king of the nails of gold!
And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of your hands,
That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old;
Your questioner, Oisin, is worthy, he comes from the Fenian lands.'Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the smoke of their dreams;
His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came;
Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow dropping a sound in faint streams
Softer than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame.Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth,
The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered stone
Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth,
And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low;
And the pearl-pale Niamh lay by me, her brow on the midst of my breast;
And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years 'gan flow;
Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our rest.And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot
How the fetlocks drip blocd in the battle, when the fallen on fallen lie rolled;
How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron's plot,
And the name of the demon whose hammer made Conchubar's sword-blade of old.And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot
That the spear-shaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of osier and hide;
How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spearhead's burning spot;
How the slow, blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide.But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their throngs,
Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales;
Came by me the kings of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter and songs,
Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the tempest with sails.Came Blanid, Mac Nessa, tall Fergus who feastward of old time slunk,
Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittle on his beard never dry,
Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car-borne, his mighty head sunk
Helpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and death making eye.And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams,
And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone.
So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not, with creatures of dreams,
In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone.At times our slumber was lightened.When the sun was on silver or gold;
When brushed with the wings of the owls, in the dimness they love going by;
When a glow-worm was green on a grass-leaf, lured from his lair in the mould;
Half wakening, we lifted our eyelids, and gazed on the grass with a sigh.So watched I when, man of the croziers, at the heel of a century fell,
Weak, in the midst of the meadow, from his miles in the midst of the air,
A starling like them that forgathered 'neath a moon waking white as a shell
When the Fenians made foray at morning with Bran, Sceolan, Lomair.I awoke:the strange horse without summons out of the distance ran,
Thrusting his nose to my shoulder; he knew in his bosom deep
That once more moved in my bosom the ancient sadness of man,
And that I would leave the Immortals, their dimness, their dews dropping sleep.O, had you seen beautiful Niamh grow white as the waters are white,
Lord of the croziers, you even had lifted your hands and wept:
But, the bird in my fingers, I mounted, remembering alone that delight
Of twilight and slumber were gone, and that hoofs impatiently stept.I died, 'O Niamh! O white one! if only a twelve-houred day,
I must gaze on the beard of Finn, and move where the old men and young
In the Fenians' dwellings of wattle lean on the chessboards and play,
Ah, sweet to me now were even bald Conan's slanderous tongue!'Like me were some galley forsaken far off in Meridian isle,
Remembering its long-oared companions, sails turning to threadbare rags;
No more to crawl on the seas with long oars mile after mile,
But to be amid shooting of flies and flowering of rushes and flags.'Their motionless eyeballs of spirits grown mild with mysterious thought,
Watched her those seamless faces from the valley's glimmering girth;
As she murmured, 'O wandering Oisin, the strength of the bell-branch is naught,
For there moves alive in your fingers the fluttering sadness of earth.'Then go through the lands in the saddle and see what the mortals do,
And softly come to your Niamh over the tops of the tide;
But weep for your Niamh, O Oisin, weep; for if only your shoe
Brush lightly as haymouse earth's pebbles, you will come no more to my side.'O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?'
I saw from a distant saddle; from the earth she made her moan:
'I would die like a small withered leaf in the autumn, for breast unto breast
We shall mingle no more, nor our gazes empty their sweetness lone'In the isles of the farthest seas where only the spirits come.
Were the winds less soft than the breath of a pigeon who sleeps on her nest,
Nor lost in the star-fires and odours the sound of the sea's vague drum?
O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?'The wailing grew distant; I rode by the woods of the wrinkling bark,
Where ever is murmurous dropping, old silence and that one sound;
For no live creatures live there, no weasels move in the dark:
In a reverie forgetful of all things, over the bubbling' ground.And I rode by the plains of the sea's edge, where all is barren and grey,
Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,
Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away',
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.And the winds made the sands on the sea's edge turning and turning go,
As my mind made the names of the Fenians.Far from the hazel and oak,
I rode away on the surges, where, high aS the saddle-bow,
Fled foam underneath me, and round me, a wandering and milky smoke.Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast,
Snatching the bird in secret; nor knew I, embosomed apart,
When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast,
For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gates of my heart.Till, fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hay
Came, and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down;
Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a shore far away,
From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-weeds brown.If I were as I once was, the strong hoofs crushing the sand and the shells,
Coming out of the sea as the dawn comes, a chaunt of love on my lips,
Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells,
I would leave no saint's head on his body from Rachlin to Bera of ships.Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-path
Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,
Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the mth,
And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade,Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;
While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood,
Awaiting in patience the straw-death, croziered one, caught in your net:
Went the laughter of scorn from my mouth like the roaring of wind in a wood.And before I went by them so huge and so speedy with eyes so bright,
Came after the hard gaze of youth, or an old man lifted his head:
And I rode and I rode, and I cried out, 'The Fenians hunt wolves in the night,
So sleep thee by daytime.' A voice cried, 'The Fenians a long time are dead.'A whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the flesh of his face as dried grass,
And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sad as a child without milk-
And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew how men sorrow and pass,
And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyes that glimmer like silk.And wrapping my face in my hair, I murmured, 'In old age they ceased';
And my tears were larger than berries, and I murmured, 'Where white clouds lie spread
On Crevroe or broad Knockfefin, with many of old they feast
On the floors of the gods.' He cried, 'No, the gods a long time are dead.'And lonely and longing for Niamh, I shivered and turned me about,
The heart in me longing to leap like a grasshopper into her heart;
I turned and rode to the westward, and followed the sea's old shout
Till I saw where Maeve lies sleeping till starlight and midnight part.And there at the foot of the mountain, two carried a sack full of sand,
They bore it with staggering and sweating, but fell with their burden at length.
Leaning down from the gem-studded saddle, I flung it five yards with my hand,
With a sob for men waxing so weakly, a sob for the Fenians' old strength.The rest you have heard of, O croziered man; how, when divided the girth,
I fell on the path, and the horse went away like a summer fly;
And my years three hundred fell on me, and I rose, and walked on the earth,
A creeping old man, full of sleep, with the spittle on his beard never dry'.How the men of the sand-sack showed me a church with its belfry in air;
Sorry place, where for swing of the war-axe in my dim eyes the crozier gleams;
What place have Caoilte and Conan, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair?
Speak, you too are old with your memories, an old man surrounded with dreams.

Editor 1 Interpretation

Introduction

The Wanderings of Oisin is a poetic masterpiece written by the renowned Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The poem tells the story of Oisin, the legendary Irish warrior, and his journey to the Land of Youth. The poem is divided into three books, and each book describes different aspects of Oisin's journey. In this literary criticism and interpretation, we will focus on Book III.

Book III of The Wanderings of Oisin is a poetic masterpiece that explores the themes of love, loss, and the passage of time. It is a highly symbolic and metaphorical poem that reflects Yeats' fascination with Irish mythology and his interest in the supernatural. The poem is full of vivid imagery and powerful symbolism, and it is a testament to Yeats' mastery of the poetic form.

Analysis

The poem begins with Oisin mourning the loss of his youth and the passing of time. He laments the fact that he has grown old and that all his friends and loved ones are dead. The opening lines set the tone for the rest of the poem and establish the central themes of love and loss.

"My arms are like the twisted thorn And yet there beauty lay; The first of all the tribe lay there And did such pleasure take; She who had brought great Hector down And put all Troy to wreck."

These lines are full of powerful imagery and symbolism. The "twisted thorn" represents Oisin's old age and his sense of isolation and loneliness. The "beauty" that "lay" in his arms refers to his memories of his youth and the people he has loved and lost. The reference to Hector and Troy is a nod to Irish mythology and the epic stories of heroism and tragedy that inspired Yeats.

As the poem progresses, Oisin continues to reflect on his past and his lost youth. He recalls his adventures in the Land of Youth and his love for Niamh, the queen of the land. He remembers the joy and happiness he felt in her presence and the pain he experienced when he was forced to leave her. These memories are bittersweet, and they highlight the theme of love and loss that runs throughout the poem.

"I have been often where the sand And the sea's cold waters ran, And I saw Niamh calling away Finian her handsome man."

These lines are full of powerful symbolism and metaphor. The "sand" and "sea's cold waters" represent the passage of time and the inevitability of change. Niamh's "call" represents the pull of the supernatural and the desire for eternal youth and beauty. Finian, Niamh's "handsome man," represents Oisin's youth and the happiness he experienced before he was forced to leave the Land of Youth.

As the poem draws to a close, Oisin reflects on the transience of life and the inevitability of death. He accepts his fate and acknowledges that his time on earth is coming to an end. However, he finds comfort in the knowledge that he will soon be reunited with his loved ones in the afterlife.

"And like a sunset were her lips, A stormy sunset on doomed ships; A citron colour gloomed in her hair, But down to her feet white vesture flowed, And with the glimmering crimson glowed Of many a figured embroidery."

These lines are full of vivid imagery and symbolism. The "sunset" represents the end of Oisin's life and the approaching darkness of death. The "stormy sunset on doomed ships" suggests that Oisin's death will be a tumultuous and painful experience. The "citron colour" of Niamh's hair represents the beauty and vitality of youth, while the "white vesture" and "figured embroidery" represent the purity and innocence of the afterlife.

Interpretation

Book III of The Wanderings of Oisin is a deeply philosophical poem that explores the themes of love, loss, and the passage of time. It reflects Yeats' fascination with Irish mythology and his interest in the supernatural. The poem is full of powerful imagery and symbolism, and it is a testament to Yeats' mastery of the poetic form.

At its heart, The Wanderings of Oisin is a poem about the human experience. It explores the universal themes of love and loss that are a part of every human life. It reminds us that time is fleeting and that we must cherish the moments we have with the people we love. It suggests that there is a mystical and supernatural aspect to life that is beyond our understanding, but that we must embrace it nonetheless.

The Wanderings of Oisin is also a deeply personal poem for Yeats. It reflects his own preoccupation with aging and mortality, and his struggles with the passing of time. It suggests that Yeats saw himself in Oisin, and that he too was searching for meaning and purpose in his own life.

Conclusion

The Wanderings of Oisin is a poem that speaks to the human experience. It reminds us that time is fleeting and that we must cherish the moments we have with the people we love. It suggests that there is a mystical and supernatural aspect to life that is beyond our understanding, but that we must embrace it nonetheless. It is a powerful reminder of the beauty and fragility of life, and it is a testament to Yeats' skill as a poet and a storyteller.

Editor 2 Analysis and Explanation

The Wanderings of Oisin: Book III is a classic piece of poetry written by the legendary Irish poet, William Butler Yeats. This poem is a continuation of the story of Oisin, a legendary Irish warrior who falls in love with a fairy princess and embarks on a journey to the Land of Youth. In this third book of the series, Yeats takes us on a journey through the mystical world of Irish mythology, exploring themes of love, loss, and the passage of time.

The poem begins with Oisin returning to Ireland after spending three hundred years in the Land of Youth. He is now an old man, and he finds that everything has changed. The people he once knew are all gone, and the land is now ruled by a new generation of warriors. Oisin feels out of place in this new world, and he longs for the days of his youth.

Throughout the poem, Yeats explores the theme of the passage of time. Oisin is a symbol of the past, and the new generation of warriors represents the present. Yeats uses this contrast to show how time changes everything, and how the past can never be recaptured. Oisin longs for the days of his youth, but he knows that they are gone forever.

The poem also explores the theme of love. Oisin is still in love with the fairy princess Niamh, but he knows that he can never be with her again. He is haunted by memories of their time together, and he longs to be reunited with her. However, he knows that this is impossible, and he must come to terms with his loss.

Yeats uses vivid imagery and symbolism to bring the world of Irish mythology to life. He describes the Land of Youth as a place of eternal beauty and youth, where time stands still. This is contrasted with the world of the present, which is described as a place of decay and death. Yeats uses this contrast to show how the past is always more beautiful than the present.

The poem also explores the theme of death. Oisin knows that his time is coming to an end, and he is not afraid of death. He longs to be reunited with Niamh in the afterlife, and he sees death as a release from the pain of living in a world that has changed so much.

Overall, The Wanderings of Oisin: Book III is a powerful exploration of the themes of love, loss, and the passage of time. Yeats uses vivid imagery and symbolism to bring the world of Irish mythology to life, and he creates a powerful sense of nostalgia for a world that has long since passed. This poem is a testament to Yeats' skill as a poet, and it is a must-read for anyone interested in Irish mythology or poetry in general.

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