WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Poetry Fix: Down by the Salley Gardens

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Today, Erika Kyba reads W. B. Yeats's "Down by the Salley Gardens," a wistful meditation on lost love and innocence.

Welcome to the Poetry Fix on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Erica Kaiba, bringing you your weekly fix of poetry from across time. Today we're reading W.B. Yeats' Down by the Sally Gardens. This is a wistful poem about young love that is eventually frustrated. Yates describes the times in which he met with his love by the Sally, or Willow Gardens. Right off the bat, we can see that this poem is going to be sad. Willows are often associated with loss, or mourning. There is a sense of lost innocence as well, as Yates describes his love as having

snow-white, perhaps reminiscent of the fairy tale of Snow White. The maiden is as young and pure as a princess from a fable. Her white hands are not yet stained by the grime of the world. And finally, there is a somewhat pastoral quality to the love story, as the narrator and his love are surrounded by scenes of nature. The dirty, sullying effect of urban life is a motif that will pop up every now and then, in the poetry of Yates and his contemporaries, as contrasted with the purity and innocence of nature. However, even with this idyllic stage set for the two lovers, Yates introduces a tension between them, which he implies will eventually split them apart. The narrator's darling first bids him to take love easy as leaves grow on the tree, then in the second stanza she bids him to take life easy

as the grass grows on the weirs. After all, leaves and grass grow freely and effortlessly, and willows themselves, which the two young lovers are surrounded by, are very flexible. If you see the wind blow through them, you'll notice how graceful and pliable they appear, despite the pressures of nature. The narrator, in his youth, refuses to agree with this easy-going way of living, mirrored by the nature around them. After all, it's not a feature of human nature to take things easily. We like being able to control the future of our lives. If something is within our control, we like to worry about it and manipulate it to our

favor. And if something is out of our control, we still like to worry about it and find a way to bring it into our control. But when this is taken too far, when we spend all our time stressing and working ourselves into a frenzy, it becomes destructive. We don't truly live and we don't truly love. The narrator condemns his former way of thinking as young and foolish because it cost him his first love, and he sadly concludes that because of his past folly, he is now full of tears. Yates' inspiration for this poem was an Irish ballad that he was attempting to reconstruct. He had heard three lines of the ballad from an elderly peasant woman, and those remembered imperfectly. From this source material, he constructed Down by the Sally Gardens, which itself was turned

into a song in 1909, when Herbert Hughes arranged it to the tune of the Maids of Moorne Shore. With all that said, let's dive in. Down by the Sally Gardens, by William Butler Yates. Down by the Sally Gardens, my love and I did meet. She passed the Sally 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 and good. full of tears. You've been listening to The Poetry Fix with Erica Kaiba. If you enjoyed this episode, consider following The Poetry Fix on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. And if you have any poems you want to see in a future episode, email your suggestions to The Poetree Fix at gmail.com. Join me next week, and we'll be reading John Milton's At a Solem Music.