BBC Radio 4: 'Yeats and Mysticism'

BBC broadcaster and writer Melvyn Bragg explores the strange and mystical world of the poet W B Yeats.

You will find the link below to the 2002 episode of BBC Radio 4's In Our Time on Yeats. Yeats, one of the greatest poets of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, was naturally drawn to many sources of spiritual knowledge, all of which nourished his extraordinary verse. We don't have to "believe" in these things of course, but they are part of him, and his complex character and deep soul.

Reading a novel by Patrick Modiano today, I came across a quotation ('I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake') from one of Yeats' most celebrated and powerful poems. Here it is, with the following lines. This is part of a much bigger poem. It is both apocalyptic in its images, and immensely gentle and loving:

He Bids His Love Be At Peace

I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,
Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white;
The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night,
The East her hidden joy before the morning break,
The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away,
The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire:
O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire,
The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay:
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat
Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,
Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,
And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet.

Click on the link below to listen to the BBC Radio podcast:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rcrgwF4kpGlxPUqPKi2nrpLreolvhBxn/view?usp=sharing