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White Birds

Publisher: LAH Publications

Catalogue Number: LAH-83

Year: 2024

For: SATB

Duration: 4:30

Commissioned by New Dublin Voices – Bernie Sherlock, Artistic Director

A setting of ‘The White Birds’ by William Butler Yeats. Yeats penned ‘The White Birds’ in 1892 after the first of four unsuccessful proposals to Irish actress, republican, and revolutionary, Maud Gonne. He proposed as they walked together along the cliffs of Howth in Ireland, and during this walk, Maud had declared her love of seagulls above all other birds.

I was drawn to this poem because of the imagery, and perhaps because I too love seagulls above all other birds. I have taken an optimistic approach to my setting, and have imagined this poem as a fantasy. I decided to imagine it not as a lament or an expression unrequited love, but rather as a daydream or fantasy, where the two lovers would be free and happy together, untethered by the complications of the world. The piece expresses that happy, free-as-birds-together, playing-on-the-wind place. 

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Text: The White Birds – by Willam Butler Yeats

I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.

A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew dabbled, the lily and rose;
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:
For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;
Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, *buoyed out on the foam of the sea!

*the word “buoyed” is omitted from the composition.