Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Yet another birthday! A scroll through the archives on the right will show that it was a remarkable year here, and as the list of those to thank for this fact is l-e-n-g-t-h-y we'll confine it to three: The Rainy Day mother, the Rainy Day wife and the Rainy Day sister. Back in 1911, William Butler Yeats praised three women, three friends, thus:

Friends

Now must I these three praise —
Three women that have wrought
What joy is in my days:
One because no thought,
Nor those unpassing cares,
No, not in these fifteen
Many-times-troubled years,
Could ever come between
Mind and delighted mind;
And one because her hand
Had strength that could unbind
What none can understand,
What none can have and thrive,
Youth's dreamy load, till she
So changed me that I live
Labouring in ecstasy.
And what of her that took
All till my youth was gone
With scarce a pitying look?
How could I praise that one?
When day begins to break
I count my good and bad,
Being wakeful for her sake,
Remembering what she had,
What eagle look still shows,
While up from my heart's root
So great a sweetness flows
I shake from head to foot.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

The three female friends Yeats dedicated his poem to were: Maud Gonne, the great love of his life; Augusta Gregory, his mentor and patron, and Olivia Shakespear, novelist and wife of a successful London lawyer, and the woman who provided the poet with his first sexual experience. The brief affair took place at her instigation in 1895, when she was 28 and Yeats was 30. It was followed by a lifelong friendship, and lots of happy birthdays.