Under Saturn
Under Saturn - fact Summary
Personal and Irish Family Memory
"Under Saturn" records the speaker's insistence that melancholy does not mean loss of love but springs from remembered people and places. It names family figures—a "red-haired Yeats," a Middleton, an old cross Pollexfen—and an Irish labourer crying recognition at Sligo quay. These are presented as durable anchors of identity: childhood vows, ancestral valleys and service to the poet's people are evoked as factual roots for his present mood.
Read Complete AnalysesDo not because this day I have grown saturnine Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought Because I have no other youth, can make me pine; For how should I forget the wisdom that you brought, The comfort that you made? Although my wits have gone On a fantastic ride, my horse's flanks are spurred By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen, And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard, And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died Before my time, seem like a vivid memory. You heard that labouring man who had served my people. He said Upon the open road, near to the Sligo quay - No, no, not said, but cried it out - 'You have come again, And surely after twenty years it was time to come.' I am thinking of a child's vow sworn in vain Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.