In 1893 Yeats wrote his poem “Rose”. It includes these lines

Come near, that no more blinded by man’s fate,
I find under the boughs of love and hate,
In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way.

I’ve been thinking about these lines for awhile. In part due to my enforced lockdown under Covid 19 restrictions. I’ve spent more time outside and thus able to hear the birds. Also to see my garden and the plants in it: the delicacy of an aquilegia, or the beauty of a daffodil. Things I almost take for granted. We have a wisteria in out garden and every year, around this time, it blooms. And each year is a little celebration that we had got our pruning regime correct and we can sit underneath it. At best with a gin and tonic or a glass of wine or two. But the irony of this new found timefulness is that it has been forced on me by a global pandemic which as of now is reputed to have killed around 16,000 people in the U.K. alone. A high price to pay for the privilege of sitting in my garden.

But Yeats links beauty with love and hate – an odd juxtaposition. Yet we see it every day. Harlen Coben in his novel “Gone for Good” has one of his characters make the following comment “You want people lined up, Will. You want the good guys on one side, the bad on the other. It doesn’t work that way, does it? It is never that simple. Love, for example, leads to hate. I think that was what started it all. Primitive love.”

And if Yeats and Harlen Coben aren’t sufficient, here is a quote from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament “I form the light and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the lord do all these things.” (Is.45:7 KJV)

So love and hate are inextricably linked. Psychologically it is part of our growth into whole beings that we know both our love and our hate. And know them both to be a part of us. (It’s one of the dangers of any kind of dualism whereby Good and Evil are separated.)

To return to Yeats, for him one sees “eternal beauty wandering on her way” underneath the boughs of love and hate, an odd and uncomfortable idea. We want love and hate to be two quite separate things. But if we are to see beauty, we have to allow ourselves to live under the boughs of our love and our hate.

I will end with Yeats reading his poem. A pleasure in itself!