A Crazed Girl

by William Butler Yeats — a poem card from Justes Mots

Yeats celebrates a mad girl who dances and sings on a shore despite physical and emotional devastation, embodying heroic persistence in the face of disaster. The poem finds beauty and nobility in her fractured spirit and desperate music. It speaks to anyone seeking inspiration from those who endure suffering with creative defiance.

That crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing…

Themes: encouragement · graduation · new-chapter · recovery