{"id":809,"date":"2015-05-25T13:05:42","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T13:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=809"},"modified":"2025-12-27T14:01:50","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T14:01:50","slug":"politics-and-a-vote-for-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2015\/05\/politics-and-a-vote-for-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics and a vote for love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
\nI have spread my dreams under your feet;
\nTread softly because you tread on my dreams.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He wasn\u2019t literally poor, of course. William Butler Yeats was born into an Anglo-Irish Protestant family at a time when the landed gentry were still in the last phase of their ascendancy. With that came the big houses, expensive schooling and freedom to move in elevated social circles of London and Dublin. Yet the ardent nationalist, poet and politician would surely be spinning merrily at the result of the Irish referendum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dreams come true for many of the 1,149,390 who voted Yes in the world\u2019s only plebiscite on gay marriage. In Ireland homosexuality was illegal just 22 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would Yeats<\/a> have made of it? Despite the dangers of putting thoughts into the mind of a dead poet, and one with such monumental stature, I\u2019m prepared to bet he would be celebrating along with Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn<\/a> the liberation it brings to Irish society \u2013 and not just to the gay minority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Tread softly..\u2019 a line sometimes tweeted during the referendum campaign is the soft and lyrical ending of an early work, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven<\/a>, a song of longing which could stir a heart of stone (if not Maud Gonne<\/a> his real life unrequited love). But there are many other moods in a lifetime\u2019s work. Yeats, a gloriously complex man \u2013 mystic, romantic, politic, nationalist and proud of his Protestant roots for all that \u2013 was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923 for \u201cinspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That same year he was re-elected to the Senate<\/a> where he became increasingly outspoken against the political influence of the Roman Catholic Church and its campaign against divorce. Likening the church\u2019s campaign tactics to those of \u2018mediaeval Spain\u2019 he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Marriage is not to us a Sacrament, but, upon the other hand, the love of a man and woman, and the inseparable physical desire, are sacred. This conviction has come to us through ancient philosophy and modern literature, and it seems to us a most sacrilegious thing to persuade two people who hate each other … to live together, and it is to us no remedy to permit them to part if neither can re-marry.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

While Yeats was then arguing for the divorce rights of heterosexual married couples, he might well be intrigued now by the unknown constitutional consequences of this new rejection of Roman Catholic orthodoxy prohibiting gay marriage. With the campaign focus now on Northern Ireland<\/a> \u2013 the only country in Western Europe to ban same sex marriage \u2013 there\u2019s an echoing of his prophetic warning to the Senate:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

If you show that this country, southern Ireland, is going to be governed by Roman Catholic ideas and by Catholic ideas alone, you will never get the North … You will put a wedge in the midst of this nation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Too soon to know if the wedge has been loosened or tightened by the result of the southern Irish vote on 22 May. Instead, our poem of the week remembers that thoughts of love can infiltrate even the most ominous political forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is Yeats\u2019 last poem<\/a>, dated May 1938, during the Spanish Civil War, with Hitler\u2019s shadow looming across Europe. It was written just eight months before he died in January 1939, aged 73.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

How can I, that girl standing there,
\nMy attention fix
\nOn Roman or on Russian
\nOr on Spanish politics?
\nYet here’s a travelled man that knows
\nWhat he talks about,
\nAnd there’s a politician
\nThat has read and thought,
\nAnd maybe what they say is true
\nOf war and war’s alarms,
\nBut O that I were young again
\nAnd held her in my arms!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Find more Yeats poems on Poem Hunter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WB Yeats would no doubt be celebrating with Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn the outcome of the referendum on gay marriage in Ireland. And, says Fay Young, his message on love still applies to the North.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18275,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions\/18275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}