The Cap and Bells
Dreamed 1894 by W.B. Yeats
The jester walked in the garden:
It rose in a straight blue garment,
But the young queen would not listen;
He bade his heart go to her,
It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming
"I have cap and bells," he pondered,
She laid them upon her bosom,
She opened her door and her window,
They set up a noise like crickets,
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EDITOR'S NOTE
Why do the jester's soul and then his heart fail to win his dream-queen? Why is it the emblem of his art that wins her over at last? It's not dream-nonsense. Yeats, awake or asleep, always valued discipline and craft, even if your chosen art is humble. Have a transcendental vision, sure, but report it fully and fairly; and then come the twenty-seven rewrites.
One more thing: this was published in The Wind among the Reeds, a collection closing with the lines:
I have spread my dreams under your feet;To learn that some of the poems he's speaking of are real, private dreams he's baring brings a new poignancy to those lines for me, as a fellow dream-artist. He means it.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
--Chris Wayan
SOURCE: Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats (1962), pp.24-5. DREAM: Deirdre Barrett writes, in The Committee of Sleep (p.42) "Yeats said he dreamed [the Cap and Bells] 'exactly as I have written it'," citing as her source the 1899 edition of The Wind Among the Reeds, pp.94-5.
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