strange
And feels the Strang heart beating where it lies A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. . . .
Being so caught up Did nothing pass before her in the air? Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop
Sept 18 1923
* swooping rThe Utuiibt godhead is half hovering still,
climbs
Yet �4iiill5*. upon her trembling body pressed
webbed
By the toes; & through that all powerful bill
tfcpoan* bowed
^Has suddenly bowed her face upon his breast. How those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs
All th^tretched body leans on fchatiwhite rush
�F He/falling bnrly thrnnm nn thr nlutr nlutr rirh
/
5. From Yeats's manuscriptJournal, Sections 248 and 250. This Journal, including facsimiles and transcriptions of the drafts of "Leda and the Swan," has been published in W. B. Yeats, Memoirs, ed. Denis Donoghue (London, 1972). The first version, entitled "Annunciation,"seems to be a clean copy of earlier drafts; Yeats went on to revise it further, especially the opening octave. Neither of the other two complete drafts, each of
which Yeats labeled "Final Version," was in fact final. Yeats crossed out the first draft. The second, although Yeats published it in 1924, was subjected to further revision before he published the poem in The Tower (1928), in the final form reprinted in the selections from Yeats, above.
Yeats's handwriting is hasty and very difficult to decipher. The readings of some words in the manuscript are uncertain.
.
A22 / POEMS IN PROCESS
feel etc body can but lean on the white rush
But mounts until her trembling thighs are pressed6
By the webbed toes; & that all powerful bill Has suddenly bowed her head on his breast
ation
Th e sw/oping godhead is half^nvering still But mAints, until her tremblin^highs are pressed By the \ebbe d toes, & that all p<\verful bill
Has hung hcrj^lpi^ body
Has snddenlv bowed f|f[- |-)fart |lpnV hl'r Ho w can those terrified vague fingtVs push Th e feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
How nowjj^i^ hp^awvi^
With hrr hndy hid nn fhu II.TITTL IUJJH
all the stretched body laid on the white rush
and Ca n feelJ^m strange heart beating wl ere it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders the Th e broken wall, the burning roof & ower And Agamemnon dead .
Being master d s
et
Being �� cuuglit up"
So
And mitf toi'cd by the brute blood of tl e air
Being HL Did nnt|-iir.rr nfl^tj hpf1"""** ^ff 'fl thr till Did she put on his knowledge with hi; power Before the indifferent beak could let f :r drop.
WB Y Sept 18 1923
swoop
A rush up"n grrnt wings & hovering st 11 H e sinks until � He has smalt an dam*, g- faaif Th e great Jbii-d ainlu, till Th e bird descends, & her frail thigh
pressed By the webbed toes, & that all
6. This passage is written across the blank page 7. Written on the blank page across from the corn- opposite the first version; Yeats drew a line indi- plete version, with an arrow indicating that it was eating that it was to replace the revised lines 2�4, a revision of the seventh line, which he had written below the first version.
.
POEMS IN PROCESS / A2 3
Final Version
Leda & the Swan
A rush, a sudden wheel and
A !nvno|) upon grout wingr Sr hovering still
stet Th e bird & her frail^highs are pressed By the toes'w'eBbed toes, & that all powerful bill
laid
Has driiram her helpless face upon his breast. Ho w can those terrified vague fingers push Th e feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
s laid
All the stretched body laid on that white rush An d feels the strange heart beating where it lies. A shudder in the loins engenders there Th e broken wall, the burning roof & tower And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up So mastered by thei*� brute blood of the air Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop.
D. H. LAWRENCE The Piano1 Somewhere beneath that piano's superb sleek 1 Must hide my mother's piano, little and bpe^n, with the back
stood close to
That Mwr ngpinrt the wall, an^^fne front's faded silk, both torn And the keys with little h^Hows, that my mother's fingers h\d wji
Softly, in the shrfdoite, a woma n is singing to me Quietly, through the y^ars I have crept back to see A child sitting under thiNoiano, in the boom of the
shakmg^mgkng string
1. Transcribed from a notebook in which Law-remaining three stanzas, sometimes radically; and rence at first entered various academic assign-most surprisingly, reversed his original conclusion. ments while he was a student at the University As Lawrence explained, some of his early poems College of Nottingham, 1906-8, but then used to "had to be altered, where sometimes the hand of write drafts of some of his early poems. These were commonplace youth had been laid on the mouth probably composed in the period from 1906 to of the demon. It is not for technique that these 1910. The text reproduced here was revised and poems are altered: it is to say the real say." published with the title "Piano" in Lawrence's New For transcriptions and discussions of this and Poems, 1918. A comparison of this draft with other poems in Lawrence's early notebook, see "Piano," reprinted above, will show that Lawrence Vivian de Sola Pinto, "D. H. Lawrence: Letter- eliminated the first and fourth stanzas (as well as Writer and Craftsman in Verse," in Renaissance the last two lines of the third stanza); revised the and Modem Studies 1 (1957): 5-34.
.
A24 / POEMS IN PROCESS
Pressing the little\ois^ feet of the mother who smiles as^lfesings
The full throated woma^^ias chosen a winning, living2 sonjNs^
And surely the heart that is in mbspust belong
To the old Sunday evenings, when aJhd^iess wandered outside And hymns gleamed on our warm lips, as we watched mother's fingers glide
is
Oi^thisrny sister at home in the old front room Singing love's first surprised gladness, alone in the gloom. She will start when she sees me, and blushing, spread out her haorfs T o cover m y mouth's raillery, tJnl I'm bound in
heart-spun
her shame's pleading hands.
A womaiSi singing me a wijd'nungarian airS. y ' And her arms^Suid het�osom and the whole of her soulu^are An d the great bla^Npiano is clamouring as my mother's na^er could clamour