A Friday Poem (no science involved)

It’s Friday and I feel a poem coming on.

Down By The Salley Gardens
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
William Butler Yeats, Crossways 1889.
Salley is an anglicanization of saileach, gaelic for the willow tree.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 11th, 2006 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “A Friday Poem (no science involved)”

  1. ArtK Says:
    August 11, 2006 at 4:54 pm

    Thanks for the explanation of “Salley.” I’ve often wondered about it. I was just listening to an old recording of Tommy Makem singing this one. He intersperses the singing with reciting A. E. Houseman’s “When I was one and twenty.”

    When I was one-and-twenty
    I heard a wise man say
    ‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
    But not your heart away;
    Give pearls away and rubies
    But keep your fancy free.’
    But I was one-and-twenty,
    No use to talk to me.

    When I was one-and-twenty
    I heard him say again,
    ‘The heart out of the bosom
    Was never given in vain;
    Tis paid with sighs a plenty
    And sold for endless rue.’
    And I am two-and-twenty,
    And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

    The combination is very effective.

  2. JohnnieCanuck Says:
    August 12, 2006 at 1:20 am

    I’d be surprised if salley and sailech were not derived from the latin salix.
    The M-W dictionary traces salicylic acid back to the french salicylique and salicin to salix. ASA was originally derived from willow bark.

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