"Under Ben Bulben" (Fifth Stanza) - W.B. Yeats

Today's going to be a special treat as it's not only going to be another poetry reading installment, but also a poetry reading featuring the reading of W.B. Yeats by Brendan Anthony Francis Ross, a special guest reader to "The Mad Hermit". After viewing my reading of "Richard Cory", Brendan contacted me over YouTube and it was there that I had the pleasure of witnessing some of his poetry readings online. The poem that he's reading, in this feature, is the fifth stanza of "Under Ben Bulben" by William Butler Yeats (whose name was accidentally spelled wrong in the video by the video taker and not by Brendan). Overall, Brendan does an excellent job at bringing out the spirit of the poem and in keeping with its rhythm as well. For those of you who are interested in some of his other postings, they could all be found here.



Under Ben Bulben (Fifth Stanza)

Irish poets, learn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after
Porter-drinkers' randy laughter;
Sing the lords and ladies gay
That were beaten into clay
Through seven heroic centuries;
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.

-William Butler Yeats