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Saturday 2005-01-22

salley gardens

Consider two famous poems: W B Yeats's Down by the salley gardens and A E Housman's When I was one-and-twenty. They share the following features:

  • The exact same length, metre and rhyme. (Housman's poem is presented as two 8-line stanzas and Yeats's as two 4-line stanzas with lines double the length. This is a difference to the eye only, not to the ear.)
  • The same "plot": a young man is wisely advised to "take love easy" / "give not your heart away", foolishly doesn't listen, and (in the last line of the second stanza) now regrets his foolishness.

"Down by the salley gardens" was published in 1889. "When I was one-and-twenty" is one of the poems in "A Shropshire lad", published in 1896. I think Housman was copying Yeats. Is this idea old hat, or obviously wrong, or new? (Lest there be any misunderstanding: I am not accusing Housman of plagiarism! This sort of copying is entirely legitimate.)

Google doesn't seem to know of any connection.

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