Hello and welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Curt.

Today's poem is by William Butler Yates, who was, of course, an Irish poet, one of the most important and famous poets of the 20th century.

He lived from 1865 to 1939. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called The Cap and Bells. It goes like this.

The jester walked in the garden. The garden had fallen still. He bade his soul rise upward and

stand on her window sill. It rose in a straight blue garment when owls began to call. It had grown

wise-tongued by thinking of a quiet and light footfall. But the young queen would not listen.

She rose in her pale night gown.

She drew in the heavy casement and pushed to latches down.

He bade his heart go to her when the owls called out no more.

In a red and quivering garment, it sang to her through the door.

It had grown sweet-tongued by

dreaming of a flutter of flower-like hair, but she took up her fan from the table and waved it off

on the air. I have cap and bells, he pondered. I will send them to her and die. And when the

morning whitened, he left them where she went by. She laid them upon her

bosom under a cloud of her hair, and her red lips sang them a love song, till stars grew out of the

air. She opened her door and her window, and the heart and the soul came through. To a right hand came the red one.

To her left hand came the blue. They set up a noise like crickets, a chattering, wise and sweet,

and her hair was a folded flower, and the quiet of love in her feet.

This is a fascinating poem because it feels like an old poem, like an old,

much older than the early 1900s.

It's nine stanzas, it's got an A, B, C, B, Rhymes scheme.

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