Down by the Salley Gardens

Posted by Yuka as Hot girls

“The poem has a flavor of romance, yet it is a poem about the fundamental question of life, that is, how to live and enjoy life. The speaker’s lover is like a prophetic sage who knows all the rules of the game in life. She bids me–who is actually a representative of all individual beings–to ‘take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree’;she also directly bids me to’ take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs.’ Love, life, these two are surely the things every single human being can’t expect to bypass lightly. They are essential to every individual. Love and life are like leaves on the tree and grass on the weirs. Leaves and grass have their own rule of living–nature determines it. So here the poet seems to say love and life can be best enjoyed when we treat them in the natural way, that is, in accordance with the rule of nature. Too much human effort will only spoil them. They are the best when they are most natural. In this sense, the poem can be regarded as a manifestation of Yeats’ belief that there is too much human interference in modern life, which is really against the rule of nature.”