Under Ben Bulben

Under Ben Bulben
by W. B. Yeats
Written1938
First published inLast Poems and Two Plays
LanguageEnglish
Subject(s)Elegy
PublisherCuala Press
Publication date1939
Media typeHardback
Lines94
Full text
Under Ben Bulben at Wikisource

"Under Ben Bulben" is a poem written by Irish poet W. B. Yeats.

Composition

It is believed to be one of the last poems he wrote, being drafted when he was 73, in August 1938 when his health was already poor (he died in January 1939).[1]

Publication

"Under Ben Bulben" was first published in July 1939, six months after Yeats' death, as the first poem in the collection Last Poems and Two Plays in a limited edition released by his sister. The trade edition Last Poems & Plays, published in 1940, added the content of New Poems and three poems printed in On the Boiler. It also made "Under Ben Bulben" the final poem, a convention followed until the 1980s when it became clear that the original arrangement better reflected the poet's intentions.[2]

Context

Ben Bulben is a large flat-topped rock formation in County Sligo, Ireland.[3] It is famous in Irish legend, appearing in The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne,[4] and was the site of a military confrontation during the Irish Civil War.[5]

The phrase "Mareotic Lake", which appears in the second line of the poem, is used in the classical religious work De Vita Contemplativa to refer to Lake Mariout in Egypt which was the location of the Therapeutae, a community of religious hermits.[6]

Phidias, mentioned in part IV of the poem, was one of the most influential sculptors in classical Athens. The Parthenon Frieze was probably sculpted under his direction.[7]

Yeats's gravestone

Yeats is buried in the churchyard of Drumcliffe Church in Sligo, which stands at the foot of Ben Bulben.[8] The last three lines of the poem are used as the epitaph on Yeats' gravestone, and they were composed with that intention:[9]

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death
Horseman, pass by!

Cultural influences

The title of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry's first novel, Horseman, Pass By, as well as the title of French writer Michel Déon's book Horseman, Pass By! ,[10] are derived from the last line of this poem.

The poem, read by actor Richard Harris, opens and closes an album of Yeats's poems set to music, entitled Now and in a Time to Be.[11]

References

  1. ^ Stallworthy, Jon; Yeats, W. B. (1966). "W. B. Yeats's 'Under Ben Bulben". The Review of English Studies. 17 (65). Oxford University Press: 30–53. doi:10.1093/res/XVII.65.30. JSTOR 513471.
  2. ^ Holdeman, David (2006). The Cambridge Introduction to W.B. Yeats. Cambridge University Press. p. 109. ISBN 9781139457873.
  3. ^ Aalen, F. H. A.; Whelan, Kevin; Stout, Matthew (1997). Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape. University of Toronto Press. p. 17. ISBN 9780802042941.
  4. ^ Conner, L.I. (1998). A Yeats Dictionary: Persons and Places in the Poetry of William Butler Yeats. Irish studies. Syracuse University Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-8156-2770-8.
  5. ^ Michael Moran (11 July 2012). "Refurbished Noble Six plot set to be blessed". The Sligo Champion. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  6. ^

    Now this class of persons may be met with in many places, for it was fitting that both Greece and the country of the barbarians should partake of whatever is perfectly good; and there is the greatest number of such men in Egypt, in every one of the districts, or nomes, as they are called, and especially around Alexandria; and from all quarters those who are the best of these therapeutae proceed on their pilgrimage to some most suitable place as if it were their country, which is beyond the Maereotic lake.

    — De Vita Contemplativa . http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/philo-ascetics.html On Ascetics] (another name for the De Vita Contemplativa), Section III.
  7. ^ Traver, Andrew G., ed. (2002). "Phidias (or Pheidas, c. 490–430 B.C.)". From Polis to Empire – The Ancient World, c. 800 B.C.–A.D. 500: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 291. ISBN 9780313309427.
  8. ^ Holdeman 2006, p. 3.
  9. ^ Allen, James Lovic (1981). "'Imitate Him If You Dare': Relationships between the Epitaphs of Swift and Yeats". An Irish Quarterly Review. 70 (278/279): 177–186. JSTOR 30090353.
  10. ^ Savin, Tristan (1 July 2005). "Michel Déon, esthète naturaliste". L'Express (in French). Retrieved 15 April 2015.
  11. ^ Jasper Rees (3 February 1997). "Sing whatever is well made". The Independent. London.