William Butler Yeats Poem

[egordon99]

For some reason I am not very good at writing lyrics but I love poetry, so here's a quick workup of a wonderful short Yeats poem.



When You Are Old
by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

[FrankHudson]

Nice job. Your own tune for this?

Stepping lightly, it's your thread, but I've done a passel of Yeats' poems to my own music, including this one -- and you can find them on the Internet if you're interested. Your melody and playing in that example work as well or better as mine.

Most Yeats sets well with music, doesn't it. Did you know that Yeats around the turn of the century wanted to have his work performed with music? He commissioned a luthier to build a psaltery and had worked with a performer on the way he wanted his work performed in concert settings. Whatever he did (there are no recordings) it didn't meet with acclaim. George Bernard Shaw (working as music critic then) panned it.

Anyway, I love to hear what more you do of Yeats or even a fancier recording of "When You Are Old."

[egordon99]

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

Nice job. Your own tune for this?

Stepping lightly, it's your thread, but I've done a passel of Yeats' poems to my own music, including this one -- and you can find them on the Internet if you're interested. Your melody and playing in that example work as well or better as mine.

Most Yeats sets well with music, doesn't it. Did you know that Yeats around the turn of the century wanted to have his work performed with music? He commissioned a luthier to build a psaltery and had worked with a performer on the way he wanted his work performed in concert settings. Whatever he did (there are no recordings) it didn't meet with acclaim. George Bernard Shaw (working as music critic then) panned it.

Anyway, I love to hear what more you do of Yeats or even a fancier recording of "When You Are Old."

Thanks for listening! Yes, I wrote the melody this morning. I initially banged it out on the piano in Am but it was too high, so I took it down to Fm and recorded this on the guitar. Trickiest part was nailing down which syllable to start each measure on. I didn't write out the melody in standard notation but I used a Google doc to BOLD the start of each measure. Then I did a quick voice memo to more or less nail it down. Then I did the quick video I shared (using my iPhone 12 Max Plus). Hopefully I'll record a more flushed out version during the winter break (I'm off for two weeks )

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by egordon99

Thanks for listening! Yes, I wrote the melody this morning. I initially banged it out on the piano in Am but it was too high, so I took it down to Fm and recorded this on the guitar. Trickiest part was nailing down which syllable to start each measure on. I didn't write out the melody in standard notation but I used a Google doc to BOLD the start of each measure. Then I did a quick voice memo to more or less nail it down. Then I did the quick video I shared (using my iPhone 12 Max Plus). Hopefully I'll record a more flushed out version during the winter break (I'm off for two weeks )

Looking forward to hearing any further version of it!

[egordon99]

And this morning I just put an AE Housman poem to music so hope to have a proper recording of that available soon (rather than the rough voice memo recording off my phone)

[Glennwillow]

That was nice! I really enjoyed that!

That's a beautiful, touching poem.

- Glenn

[egordon99]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

That was nice! I really enjoyed that!

That's a beautiful, touching poem.

- Glenn

Thanks Glenn! Appreciate you giving it a listen!