Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with metry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Loves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the wingèd sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For all things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.
credits
from The Two Trees: A Yeats Song Cycle,
released September 5, 2019
Music composed by Wendy Durrwachter
Poem by William Butler Yeats
Adam Sippola, Tenor
Wendy Durrwachter, Piano
These almost heartbreakingly gentle felted piano compositions have the delicacy and loveliness of slow-falling snow. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 30, 2023
Minimal and emotionally evocative compositions for solo piano in the Ryuichi Sakamoto vein from Cincinnati's Tristan Eckerson. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 18, 2020
The Iranian contemporary-classical producer’s most comprehensive work yet; movements fueled by personal emotion and Persian history. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 3, 2022