white_hart on poetry

[conuly]

In the course of an enjoyable walk through the local woods which was definitely more of a squelch in places, I found myself wondering just how the woodland paths W.B. Yeats walked along at Coole were in a condition to be described as "dry", as in my experience woodland paths in autumn and winter are pretty much always muddy. And he specifically describes the water as "brimming" so I don't think it can have been an unusually dry year.

I suppose the answer really is that "The trees are in their autumn beauty, the woodland paths are ankle-deep in mud" neither rhymes nor scans, and that Yeats was swanning along being all poetic with his head in the clouds and, being a man, not having to worry about how to get the mud out of his trousers later...

Context is sick of washing mud out of men's pants.