The Sorrow of Love

I must confess that I hoped to find a ridiculous version of one of Yeats’s poems. So I searched for “Yeats metal,” and I was not disappointed. Of note was a poorly recorded, absolutely absurd metal version of “The Song of Wandering Aengus,” complete with leather and black lipstick, and a much better quality but equally ill-suited opera version of “Byzantium” (although why an opera version showed up when I searched for “Yeats metal” is beyond me). Ultimately I decided to review a version of “The Sorrow of Love” by a band called Agalloch because I think the music reflects the poem in some interesting ways.

Knowing the text of the poem would be useful in understanding my review:

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;

Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.

First, the music echoes the melancholic and haunting tone of the poem. Just before the singing (chanting?) begins, a symbol crash (1:14) momentarily shatters the mood created by the previous minute of music in the same way the “brawling of a sparrow” shatters the stillness of night. During the first verse, the singer’s “cry” is “blotted out” by the music and a heavy use of reverb. In the second verse, the singer’s voice arises -- like the mournful girl -- out of the fog of music and reverb to utter the prophecy of the doom. The third verse is sung like the first, but instead of the singer’s cry being blotted out, the music fades out for the final line, allowing man’s composed cry to be heard.

Do I like this version? Hard to say. Listening to it several times while composing this review, it is kind of catchy in a lulling, repetitive, monk-like-chant kind of way. I do appreciate what seems to be an attempt to engage with the text of the poem. For better or worse, when I read the poem now I can’t escape the droning rhythm of this version.