The Song of the Wandering Aengus

The Song of the Wandering Aengus was a 19th and 20th century Earth poem by William Butler Yeats. The poem describes a man going into the woods, after which he catches a fish which turns into a beautiful woman with apple blossoms in her hair. She calls his name and then vanishes, and he spends the rest of his life searching for her, his vision of perfection.

Sally Archer used to recite the poem to her son, Jonathan Archer, whenever he had trouble sleeping. He thought it had a funny name.

As a child, Archer created an image in his mind of the woman from the poem. Whilst on a rogue planet, a wraith transformed itself into the woman Archer had imagined and communicated with him. (ENT: "Rogue Planet")

In the first draft script of "Rogue Planet", this composition was referred to, by Archer, as both a song and a poem (though, in the final draft of the teleplay, it was consistently termed a poem, as it is identified in the final version of the episode too).

The poem (excerpt)

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head

External links

The Song of Wandering Aengus at Poetry Foundation