MEaning of WB YEats Brown penny

That's a pretty tough question, there, Boss. Yeats is one of the most important English language poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and yet he is not typical of the period. Most poets in the language were moving toward free verse, but Yeats took a very traditionalist view of how poetry ought to be learned. The tradition of the ancient Irish was that to be a bard, a singer of verse, one had first to master all of the verse forms known to bards, and go into the wild places, living from hand to mouth, exposed to elements, to truly feel nature and to compose from one's feelings.

Yeats grew up in a wildly beautiful part of the Island, in County Mayo, and rambled there and in County Sligo. At one time, as a young man, he did ramble about the countryside in all weather, composing verse aloud as he sat beneath the dripping bush.

Brown Penny is not the work of the young Yeats, however--he wrote it in middle age. But as he grew older, he wrote more austere, more sparse verse, and became even more dedicated to verse form and traditional rhyming. In that respect, he moved farther from the poets of his generation.

Brown Penny is about love, and the welter of emotions which it engenders in the young man's heart. Joy, dismay, fear, wonder, doubt--and he has woven all of those into this brief poem. The old penny of the United Kingdom was a large brown coin, and had symbolic meaning to the common folk. One of those meanings was love, that love was something priceless, to which no mere material value could be attached. Although not understood today, that symbolism survives in the expression "a penny for your thoughts," which originally was used to indicate to the person spoken to that deep emotion motivated the question.

Brown Penny should be viewed as a song more than a poem, and a whirling dance of a song at that. Imagine the poet so immersed in his love and the conflicting emotional responses to which it gives rise, whirling in a dance, a reel, in which he is "looped" in the hair of his lover, both literally and fiburatively, and wrapped ever more securely in the emotions which have gripped him. If you can, sing the poem to yourself, and think of the twirling Irish dance known as the reel. It is quite a marvelous work of poetry, and very much in the ancient Irish spirit of acheiving freedom withing the bounds of form.

Here, let's post a copy of the poem, so that others might read and comment . . .

I whispered, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

He's in love with an older women. But thinks he is to young. So he is asking the penny. Heads, he is to young. Tails, he is old enough.Next poem please.(I do better here then at the book lines thread)

Dear sirs,

It is interesting. I too have heard «a penny for your thoughts». It is used, I think the word is, «flippantly». A penny is not much for one's thoughts, no?

The penny in the poem is perhaps the plain face of the girl. She is not young and fair. She is plain like a brown penny. But the poet is entangled in «the loops of her hair».

But it is only my opinion. I do not care for the poem.

Kind regards,

Goldmund

Hi Setanta,
I wanted to know to who is he addresing it to, does the penny speak to him (symbolically). Yea I do like Yeats poems and got to know that this one was not a poem written at his younga age.
but I just wanted to know when he is talking about love, to whom he is addressing it to

Thanks Goldmund and Amigos.

Thanks
Sarasangi

He is addressing the concept of love in speaking to the brown penny. As he well knew, throughout what are called the British Isles at that time, a large copper penny, brown from constant use and commonly called a brown penny, was seen by the "common folk" as a symbol of love, as well as of chance, two ideas which are not exclusive one of the other. In the United States, there is an old folk-custom of taking a daisy, a small flower with many small, long white petals, and removing them one at a time, saying, alternately: "She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me . . . " etc. This is a similar exercise, in addressing the brown penny, but much more complex, more convoluted. The genius of his art at that point in his life is that he was able to pack so much meaning into so few words. In addressing the penny, he addresses love itself, and all of the uncertainty which it holds for each person.

Vow that was cool....
but could u describe at the end why does he say
the below
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

Is he sad saying so, is he meaning love is bitter...
Sorry if Iam getting too much with this poem...some how started liking it and wanted to know the in and out of this poem


Do u know any other such poems of his...or how about Tennyson

I'll add to Amigo's literal, but incomplete, answer by adding my own literal analysis. The penny has landed in such a way as to say "no" (or only if she's young and fair). But, he rejects the penny's answer because it can't be based on any meaningful understanding of love. Love is too complex to know rationally and any attempt to do so would take so much time that he would miss the opportunity to experience it. (Besides, he is already smitten by this woman.) He has decided that the best way to find out if he will find the full depth of love is to follow his feelings now.

Reread, poem there is no older woman. Only boy coming to age.

Okay, I'll buy that none is specified. But I'd imagine he's got someone in mind; if only a vision. It's hard to imagine a boy contemplating his likelihood of finding love without a specific trigger or just as the result hormonal changes.

No, val, i'm the one wrong about the older woman. You made no mention of an older woman. The young man talks about being to young, But not being to young for the women but to young to love.

He means that love can obsess a young man, absorb him until he loses all touch with any other reality. I love this poem because i cannot read it without hearing a deep Irish voice singing, melancholy, despairing and wild with the joy of it all . . .

My favorite Yeats is The Lake Isle at Inisfree:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.




When i lived briefly in Ireland, we often drove past the lake in the early morning on the way to work, through "the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings."

Tennyson--i was never much of a fan of his work, so i don't have any particular poem i would recommend.

setanta,
That was nice one, Iam hearing it for the first time .
This more a kind of NATURE poem...
loved it
thanks


Sarasangi

To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:
Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;
The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,
Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;
And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old
In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea,
Sing in their high and lonely melody.
Come near, that no more blinded hy man's fate,
I find under the boughs of love and hate,
In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way.

Come near, come near, come near - Ah, leave me still
A little space for the rose-breath to fill!
Lest I no more bear common things that crave;
The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,
The field-mouse running by me in the grass,
And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass;
But seek alone to hear the strange things said
By God to the bright hearts of those long dead,
And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know.
Come near; I would, before my time to go,
Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.



Another song of a poem which i can hear singing, but now the slow, stomping tread of battle, with the pipes whining low and blood-stained in the background, and a race gone down singing, joyful, murdered by their own intensity.

Fergus and the Druid

Fergus. This whole day have I followed in the rocks,
And you have changed and flowed from shape to shape,
First as a raven on whose ancient wings
Scarcely a feather lingered, then you seemed
A weasel moving on from stone to stone,
And now at last you wear a human shape,
A thin grey man half lost in gathering night.

Druid. What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings?

Fergus. This would I say, most wise of living souls:
Young subtle Conchubar sat close by me
When I gave judgment, and his words were wise,
And what to me was burden without end,
To him seemed easy, so I laid the crown
Upon his head to cast away my sorrow.

Druid. What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings?

Fergus. A king and proud! and that is my despair.
I feast amid my people on the hill,
And pace the woods, and drive my chariot-wheels
In the white border of the murmuring sea;
And still I feel the crown upon my head

Druid. What would you, Fergus?

Fergus. Be no more a king
But learn the dreaming wisdom that is yours.

Druid. Look on my thin grey hair and hollow cheeks
And on these hands that may not lift the sword,
This body trembling like a wind-blown reed.
No woman's loved me, no man sought my help.

Fergus. A king is but a foolish labourer
Who wastes his blood to be another's dream.

Druid. Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams;
Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.

Fergus. I see my life go drifting like a river
From change to change; I have been many things -
A green drop in the surge, a gleam of light
Upon a sword, a fir-tree on a hill,
An old slave grinding at a heavy quern,
A king sitting upon a chair of gold -
And all these things were wonderful and great;
But now I have grown nothing, knowing all.
Ah! Druid, Druid, how great webs of sorrow
Lay hidden in the small slate-coloured thing!

Hey Setanta,
Can u give a intro of who Fregus and Druid are...
Historical characters of Ireland or something...

nice to read them but

Sarasangi

Fergus and the Red Branch (Clickity-click ! ! !)

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Druids were the "priests" of ancient Keltic society. They should not be considered as priests are in organized religion as it is known in the world, today, however. Their function and activities varied widely within each Keltic society, and among the Irish they were seen as prophets, seeresses, magicians, shape-changers. Among the Irish, they often lived wild and apart, and were seen as belonging to different orders--the Druid of the poem is a wild druid. Yeats may well have seen himself as a bardic Druid.

Setanta, Are you Irish?

By descent, yes . . . by birth, i'm American . . . i was born in the Bronx, at a time when it was the second largest Irish city in the world . . .