Sunday Whimsy

It's my birthday today. The first one without my father ringing me up and going overboard with his 'Happy Birthday Daughter' routine so I confess it all seems a bit weird and wistful at the moment. I'm now two years off 50, where the heck did all that time go? I remember becoming really down at the thought of hitting 30 - nearing 50 in comparison seems like a piece of cake. Maybe I've finally grown up and learnt that it doesn't really matter - age is really just a number and it's your attitude and approach to life that counts! Anyway, as a little birthday offering I give you 'Hazelwood' by Patrick Wolf, which uses the lyrics from a favourite childhood poem by W.B Yeats. Usually I listen to such things with a sense of dread, fearful that something I've learnt to love is somehow going to get distorted by another persons translation of it, but in this instance, I have to say, I like what I hear...



'The Song of Wandering Aegnus' by William Butler Yeats.

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

And when I had laid it on the floor
And went to blow the fire aflame,
Something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossoms in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

When I'm old from wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lip and take her hand;
And walk among tall dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.