Yeats: “To a Young Girl”

 

Gustave Courbet – Jo, la belle Irlandaise (1865 -1866)

 

William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount – Dublin – on June 13th, 1865

He wrote “To a Young Girl”  for Iseult Gunne, the adopted daughter of his beloved Maud. It is a beautiful love poem that sums up the story of the poet’s passionate devotion to her mother and it ideally unites the older and the younger generations through the common bitter-sweet experience of love.

My dear, my dear, I know
More than another
What makes your heart beat so;
Not even your own mother
Can know it as I know,
Who broke my heart for her
When the wild thought,
That she denies
And has forgot,
Set all her blood astir
And glittered in her eyes.

 

Mia cara, mia cara, lo so
Più di chiunque altro
Ciò che ti fa battere il cuore così forte;
Neppure tua madre
Può saperlo come lo so io,
Che da lei mi sono fatto spezzare il cuore
Quando il pensiero selvaggio,
Che lei nega
E ha dimenticato,
Le eccitava il sangue
E brillava nei suoi occhi.
(L.Z.)