Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Somebody on Facebook asked what my favorite poem was

And I realized that I had put other poems up here before, but never this one. I have this memorized and it has come in handy repeatedly, most frequently in youth group when we need a reading and nobody feels like looking it up. When I recite it, though, I usually have a word or two off, so I looked it up again for posting purposes.

Anyway:

The Fiddler of Dooney, by Yates

WHEN I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Moharabuiee.

I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.

When we come at the end of time,
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With ‘Here is the fiddler of Dooney!’
And dance like a wave of the sea.

4 comments:

PG said...

Yeats is always good stuff.

kimc said...

Hunh. I don't think of you as merry. Well, okay, merry. Hunh.

Chalicechick said...

Shrug. Didn't say I was "good" either.

CC

PG said...

What I like about this poem is that it sounds like someone is singing it to the sound of a fiddle. It's a song, not just a poem.