A Banjo Player by W.B. Yeats

A girl has been playing on the banjo. She is pretty and if I didn't / listen to her I could have watched her, and if I didn't watch her I / could have listened. Her voice, the movements of her body, the / expression of her face all said the same thing. A player of a different / temper and body would have made all different and might have been / delightful in some other way. A movement not of music only but of life / came to its perfection. I was delighted and I did not know why until I / thought 'that is the way my people, the people I see in the mind's eye, / play music, and I like it because it is all personal, as personal as / Villon's poetry. ' The little instrument is quite light and the player / can move freely and express a joy that is not of the fingers and the / mind only but of the whole being; and all the while her movements call / up into the mind, so erect and natural she is, whatever is most / beautiful in her daily life. Nearly all the old instruments were like / that, even the organ was once a little instrument and when it grew big / our wise forefathers gave it to God in the cathedrals where it befits / Him to be everything. But if you sit at the piano it is the piano, the / mechanism, that is the important thing, and nothing of you means / anything but your fingers and your intellect.