"The Song of Wandering Aengus" is a poem by the Irish writer W.B. Yeats, first published in 1897 before appearing in Yeats's 1899 collection The Wind Among the Reeds. The poem describes Aengus—an Irish god of youth, poetry, and love—entering the woods, where he fishes a trout out of a stream. The trout suddenly transforms into a girl, who promptly disappears. Aengus then spends his life seeking her out, becoming old in the process, though he never loses faith in his eventual success.
The work responds to the mythology surrounding the figure of Aengus, who, in Irish lore, spends years seeking out a woman who appears to him in a dream. In this way, the poem fits into the segment of Yeats's oeuvre concerned with Irish myth and legend, as well as his broader interest in the mystical and supernatural. The poem is also a product of the Irish Literary Revival, taking as its subject Celtic culture.
The poem consists of three octaves written in iambic tetrameter. It follows a songlike ABCBDEFE rhyme scheme. In its story of the woman's transformation and Aengus's subsequent search, it highlights themes of love, aging, nature, and indeed transformation and change itself.
