Amorous Cries

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

—Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 2, scene vii

Yeats when young wrote a poem he called,

“He thinks of his Past Greatness when

a Part of the Constellations of Heaven.”

I think of my Present Obscurity—

an Aspect of the Depredations of Earth.

Toys scorn the Constellations now,

"The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough";

I do my best—for what my best is worth.

“I became a rush that horses tread:

I became a man, a hater of the wind,"

a cicerone in the Country of the Blind.

Who know too much confound surprise.

“O beast of the wilderness, bird of the air,

Must I endure your amorous cries?”

Note: The quoted lines are quotations from Yeats’s poem, published a century and a quarter ago.

Sunday, March 9, 2025