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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/32233-8.txt b/32233-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..39cb8aa --- /dev/null +++ b/32233-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1951 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Wind Among the Reeds, by William Butler Yeats + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wind Among the Reeds + +Author: William Butler Yeats + +Release Date: May 3, 2010 [EBook #32233] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS *** + + + + +Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + + +The Wind Among the Reeds + + + + +_The_ WIND AMONG +THE REEDS + +_By_ + +WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS + +LONDON · ELKIN MATHEWS +VIGO STREET · W · MDCCCCIII + +FOURTH EDITION. + + + + + PAGE + +THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE 1 + +THE EVERLASTING VOICES 3 + +THE MOODS 4 + +AEDH TELLS OF THE ROSE IN HIS HEART 5 + +THE HOST OF THE AIR 7 + +BREASAL THE FISHERMAN 10 + +A CRADLE SONG 11 + +INTO THE TWILIGHT 13 + +THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS 15 + +THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER 17 + +THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY 18 + +THE HEART OF THE WOMAN 20 + +AEDH LAMENTS THE LOSS OF LOVE 21 + +MONGAN LAMENTS THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME + UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED 22 + +MICHAEL ROBARTES BIDS HIS BELOVED BE AT + PEACE 24 + +HANRAHAN REPROVES THE CURLEW 26 + +MICHAEL ROBARTES REMEMBERS FORGOTTEN + BEAUTY 27 + +A POET TO HIS BELOVED 29 + +AEDH GIVES HIS BELOVED CERTAIN RHYMES 30 + +TO MY HEART, BIDDING IT HAVE NO FEAR 31 + +THE CAP AND BELLS 32 + +THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 35 + +MICHAEL ROBARTES ASKS FORGIVENESS BECAUSE + OF HIS MANY MOODS 37 + +AEDH TELLS OF A VALLEY FULL OF LOVERS 40 + +AEDH TELLS OF THE PERFECT BEAUTY 42 + +AEDH HEARS THE CRY OF THE SEDGE 43 + +AEDH THINKS OF THOSE WHO HAVE SPOKEN EVIL + OF HIS BELOVED 44 + +THE BLESSED 45 + +THE SECRET ROSE 47 + +HANRAHAN LAMENTS BECAUSE OF HIS WANDERINGS 51 + +THE TRAVAIL OF PASSION 52 + +THE POET PLEADS WITH HIS FRIEND FOR OLD + FRIENDS 54 + +HANRAHAN SPEAKS TO THE LOVERS OF HIS SONGS + IN COMING DAYS 55 + +AEDH PLEADS WITH THE ELEMENTAL POWERS 57 + +AEDH WISHES HIS BELOVED WERE DEAD 59 + +AEDH WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN 60 + +MONGAN THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS 61 + +NOTES 65 + + + + +THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE + + + The host is riding from Knocknarea + And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare; + Caolte tossing his burning hair + And Niamh calling _Away, come away: + Empty your heart of its mortal dream. + The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, + Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, + Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam, + Our arms are waving, our lips are apart; + And if any gaze on our rushing band, + We come between him and the deed of his hand, + We come between him and the hope of his heart_. + The host is rushing 'twixt night and day, + And where is there hope or deed as fair? + Caolte tossing his burning hair, + And Niamh calling _Away, come away_. + + + + +THE EVERLASTING VOICES + + + O sweet everlasting Voices be still; + Go to the guards of the heavenly fold + And bid them wander obeying your will + Flame under flame, till Time be no more; + Have you not heard that our hearts are old, + That you call in birds, in wind on the hill, + In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore? + O sweet everlasting Voices be still. + + + + +THE MOODS + + + Time drops in decay, + Like a candle burnt out, + And the mountains and woods + Have their day, have their day; + What one in the rout + Of the fire-born moods, + Has fallen away? + + + + +AEDH TELLS OF THE ROSE IN HIS HEART + + + All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, + The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, + The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould, + Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart. + + The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; + I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart, + With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold + For my dreams of your image that blossoms + a rose in the deeps of my heart. + + + + +THE HOST OF THE AIR + + + O'Driscoll drove with a song, + The wild duck and the drake, + From the tall and the tufted reeds + Of the drear Hart Lake. + + And he saw how the reeds grew dark + At the coming of night tide, + And dreamed of the long dim hair + Of Bridget his bride. + + He heard while he sang and dreamed + A piper piping away, + And never was piping so sad, + And never was piping so gay. + + And he saw young men and young girls + Who danced on a level place + And Bridget his bride among them, + With a sad and a gay face. + + The dancers crowded about him, + And many a sweet thing said, + And a young man brought him red wine + And a young girl white bread. + + But Bridget drew him by the sleeve, + Away from the merry bands, + To old men playing at cards + With a twinkling of ancient hands. + + The bread and the wine had a doom, + For these were the host of the air; + He sat and played in a dream + Of her long dim hair. + + He played with the merry old men + And thought not of evil chance, + Until one bore Bridget his bride + Away from the merry dance. + + He bore her away in his arms, + The handsomest young man there, + And his neck and his breast and his arms + Were drowned in her long dim hair. + + O'Driscoll scattered the cards + And out of his dream awoke: + Old men and young men and young girls + Were gone like a drifting smoke; + + But he heard high up in the air + A piper piping away, + And never was piping so sad, + And never was piping so gay. + + + + +BREASAL THE FISHERMAN + + + Although you hide in the ebb and flow + Of the pale tide when the moon has set, + The people of coming days will know + About the casting out of my net, + And how you have leaped times out of mind + Over the little silver cords, + And think that you were hard and unkind, + And blame you with many bitter words. + + + + +A CRADLE SONG + + + The Danann children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold, + And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes, + For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies, + With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold: + I kiss my wailing child and press it to my breast, + And hear the narrow graves calling my child and me. + Desolate winds that cry over the wandering sea; + Desolate winds that hover in the flaming West; + Desolate winds that beat the doors of Heaven, and beat + The doors of Hell and blow there many a whimpering ghost; + O heart the winds have shaken; the unappeasable host + Is comelier than candles before Maurya's feet. + + + + +INTO THE TWILIGHT + + + Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, + Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; + Laugh heart again in the gray twilight, + Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn. + + Your mother Eire is always young, + Dew ever shining and twilight gray; + Though hope fall from you and love decay, + Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue. + + Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill: + For there the mystical brotherhood + Of sun and moon and hollow and wood + And river and stream work out their will; + And God stands winding His lonely horn, + And time and the world are ever in flight; + And love is less kind than the gray twilight, + And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn. + + + + +THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS + + + I went out to the hazel wood, + Because a fire was in my head, + And cut and peeled a hazel wand, + And hooked a berry to a thread; + And when white moths were on the wing, + And moth-like stars were flickering out, + I dropped the berry in a stream + And caught a little silver trout. + + When I had laid it on the floor + I went to blow the fire a-flame, + But something rustled on the floor, + And someone called me by my name: + It had become a glimmering girl + With apple blossom in her hair + Who called me by my name and ran + And faded through the brightening air. + + Though I am old with wandering + Through hollow lands and hilly lands, + I will find out where she has gone, + And kiss her lips and take her hands; + And walk among long dappled grass, + And pluck till time and times are done, + The silver apples of the moon, + The golden apples of the sun. + + + + +THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER + + + I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow + Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; + And then I must scrub and bake and sweep + Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; + And the young lie long and dream in their bed + Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head, + And their day goes over in idleness, + And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress: + While I must work because I am old, + And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold. + + + + +THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY + + + When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, + Folk dance like a wave of the sea; + My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet, + My brother in Moharabuiee. + + I passed my brother and cousin: + They read in their books of prayer; + I read in my book of songs + I bought at the Sligo fair. + + When we come at the end of time, + To Peter sitting in state, + He will smile on the three old spirits, + But call me first through the gate; + + For the good are always the merry, + Save by an evil chance, + And the merry love the fiddle + And the merry love to dance: + + And when the folk there spy me, + They will all come up to me, + With 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!' + And dance like a wave of the sea. + + + + +THE HEART OF THE WOMAN + + + O what to me the little room + That was brimmed up with prayer and rest; + He bade me out into the gloom, + And my breast lies upon his breast. + + O what to me my mother's care, + The house where I was safe and warm; + The shadowy blossom of my hair + Will hide us from the bitter storm. + + O hiding hair and dewy eyes, + I am no more with life and death, + My heart upon his warm heart lies, + My breath is mixed into his breath. + + + + +AEDH LAMENTS THE LOSS OF LOVE + + + Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, + I had a beautiful friend + And dreamed that the old despair + Would end in love in the end: + She looked in my heart one day + And saw your image was there; + She has gone weeping away. + + + + +MONGAN LAMENTS THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED + + + Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns! + I have been changed to a hound with one red ear; + I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns, + For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire and fear + Under my feet that they follow you night and day. + A man with a hazel wand came without sound; + He changed me suddenly; I was looking another way; + And now my calling is but the calling of a hound; + And Time and Birth and Change are hurrying by. + I would that the boar without bristles had come from the West + And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky + And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest. + + + + +MICHAEL ROBARTES BIDS HIS BELOVED BE AT PEACE + + + I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake, + Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white; + The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night, + The East her hidden joy before the morning break, + The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away, + The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire: + O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire, + The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay: + Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat + Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast, + Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest, + And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet. + + + + +HANRAHAN REPROVES THE CURLEW + + + O, curlew, cry no more in the air, + Or only to the waters in the West; + Because your crying brings to my mind + Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair + That was shaken out over my breast: + There is enough evil in the crying of wind. + + + + +MICHAEL ROBARTES REMEMBERS FORGOTTEN BEAUTY + + + When my arms wrap you round I press + My heart upon the loveliness + That has long faded from the world; + The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled + In shadowy pools, when armies fled; + The love-tales wove with silken thread + By dreaming ladies upon cloth + That has made fat the murderous moth; + The roses that of old time were + Woven by ladies in their hair, + The dew-cold lilies ladies bore + Through many a sacred corridor + Where such gray clouds of incense rose + That only the gods' eyes did not close: + For that pale breast and lingering hand + Come from a more dream-heavy land, + A more dream-heavy hour than this; + And when you sigh from kiss to kiss + I hear white Beauty sighing, too, + For hours when all must fade like dew + But flame on flame, deep under deep, + Throne over throne, where in half sleep + Their swords upon their iron knees + Brood her high lonely mysteries. + + + + +A POET TO HIS BELOVED + + + I bring you with reverent hands + The books of my numberless dreams; + White woman that passion has worn + As the tide wears the dove-gray sands, + And with heart more old than the horn + That is brimmed from the pale fire of time: + White woman with numberless dreams + I bring you my passionate rhyme. + + + + +AEDH GIVES HIS BELOVED CERTAIN RHYMES + + + Fasten your hair with a golden pin, + And bind up every wandering tress; + I bade my heart build these poor rhymes: + It worked at them, day out, day in, + Building a sorrowful loveliness + Out of the battles of old times. + + You need but lift a pearl-pale hand, + And bind up your long hair and sigh; + And all men's hearts must burn and beat; + And candle-like foam on the dim sand, + And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky, + Live but to light your passing feet. + + + + +TO MY HEART, BIDDING IT HAVE NO FEAR + + + Be you still, be you still, trembling heart; + Remember the wisdom out of the old days: + _Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, + And the winds that blow through the starry ways, + Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood + Cover over and hide, for he has no part + With the proud, majestical multitude._ + + + + +THE CAP AND BELLS + + + The jester walked in the garden: + The garden had fallen still; + He bade his soul rise upward + And stand on her window-sill. + + It rose in a straight blue garment, + When owls began to call: + It had grown wise-tongued by thinking + Of a quiet and light footfall; + + But the young queen would not listen; + She rose in her pale night gown; + She drew in the heavy casement + And pushed the latches down. + + He bade his heart go to her, + When the owls called out no more; + In a red and quivering garment + It sang to her through the door. + + It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming, + Of a flutter of flower-like hair; + But she took up her fan from the table + And waved it off on the air. + + 'I have cap and bells,' he pondered, + 'I will send them to her and die;' + And when the morning whitened + He left them where she went by. + + She laid them upon her bosom, + Under a cloud of her hair, + And her red lips sang them a love song: + Till stars grew out of the air. + + She opened her door and her window, + And the heart and the soul came through, + To her right hand came the red one, + To her left hand came the blue. + + They set up a noise like crickets, + A chattering wise and sweet, + And her hair was a folded flower + And the quiet of love in her feet. + + + + +THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG + + + The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears + Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes, + And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries + Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears. + We who still labour by the cromlec on the shore, + The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew, + Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you + Master of the still stars and of the flaming door. + + + + +MICHAEL ROBARTES ASKS FORGIVENESS BECAUSE OF HIS MANY MOODS + + + If this importunate heart trouble your peace + With words lighter than air, + Or hopes that in mere hoping flicker and cease; + Crumple the rose in your hair; + And cover your lips with odorous twilight and say, + 'O Hearts of wind-blown flame! + 'O Winds, elder than changing of night and day, + 'That murmuring and longing came, + 'From marble cities loud with tabors of old + 'In dove-gray faery lands; + 'From battle banners fold upon purple fold, + 'Queens wrought with glimmering hands; + 'That saw young Niamh hover with love-lorn face + 'Above the wandering tide; + 'And lingered in the hidden desolate place, + 'Where the last Phoenix died + 'And wrapped the flames above his holy head; + 'And still murmur and long: + 'O Piteous Hearts, changing till change be dead + 'In a tumultuous song:' + And cover the pale blossoms of your breast + With your dim heavy hair, + And trouble with a sigh for all things longing for rest + The odorous twilight there. + + + + +AEDH TELLS OF A VALLEY FULL OF LOVERS + + + I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs, + For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood; + And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood + With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes: + I cried in my dream '_O women bid the young men lay + 'Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair, + 'Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair + 'Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away._' + + + + +AEDH TELLS OF THE PERFECT BEAUTY + + + O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes + The poets labouring all their days + To build a perfect beauty in rhyme + Are overthrown by a woman's gaze + And by the unlabouring brood of the skies: + And therefore my heart will bow, when dew + Is dropping sleep, until God burn time, + Before the unlabouring stars and you. + + + + +AEDH HEARS THE CRY OF THE SEDGE + + + I wander by the edge + Of this desolate lake + Where wind cries in the sedge + _Until the axle break + That keeps the stars in their round + And hands hurl in the deep + The banners of East and West + And the girdle of light is unbound, + Your breast will not lie by the breast + Of your beloved in sleep_. + + + + +AEDH THINKS OF THOSE WHO HAVE SPOKEN EVIL OF HIS BELOVED + + + Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair, + And dream about the great and their pride; + They have spoken against you everywhere, + But weigh this song with the great and their pride; + I made it out of a mouthful of air, + Their children's children shall say they have lied. + + + + +THE BLESSED + + + Cumhal called out, bending his head, + Till Dathi came and stood, + With a blink in his eyes at the cave mouth, + Between the wind and the wood. + + And Cumhal said, bending his knees, + 'I have come by the windy way + 'To gather the half of your blessedness + 'And learn to pray when you pray. + + 'I can bring you salmon out of the streams + 'And heron out of the skies.' + But Dathi folded his hands and smiled + With the secrets of God in his eyes. + + And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke + All manner of blessed souls, + Women and children, young men with books, + And old men with croziers and stoles. + + 'Praise God and God's mother,' Dathi said, + 'For God and God's mother have sent + 'The blessedest souls that walk in the world + 'To fill your heart with content.' + + 'And which is the blessedest,' Cumhal said, + 'Where all are comely and good? + 'Is it these that with golden thuribles + 'Are singing about the wood?' + + 'My eyes are blinking,' Dathi said, + 'With the secrets of God half blind, + 'But I can see where the wind goes + 'And follow the way of the wind; + + 'And blessedness goes where the wind goes, + 'And when it is gone we are dead; + 'I see the blessedest soul in the world + 'And he nods a drunken head. + + 'O blessedness comes in the night and the day + 'And whither the wise heart knows; + 'And one has seen in the redness of wine + 'The Incorruptible Rose, + + 'That drowsily drops faint leaves on him + 'And the sweetness of desire, + 'While time and the world are ebbing away + 'In twilights of dew and of fire.' + + + + +THE SECRET ROSE + + + Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, + Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those + Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, + Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir + And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep + Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep + Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold + The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold + Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes + Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise + In druid vapour and make the torches dim; + Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him + Who met Fand walking among flaming dew + By a gray shore where the wind never blew, + And lost the world and Emer for a kiss; + And him who drove the gods out of their liss, + And till a hundred morns had flowered red, + Feasted and wept the barrows of his dead; + And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown + And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown + Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods; + And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods, + And sought through lands and islands numberless years, + Until he found with laughter and with tears, + A woman, of so shining loveliness, + That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress, + A little stolen tress. I, too, await + The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. + When shall the stars be blown about the sky, + Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die? + Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows, + Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose? + + + + +HANRAHAN LAMENTS BECAUSE OF HIS WANDERINGS + + + O where is our Mother of Peace + Nodding her purple hood? + For the winds that awakened the stars + Are blowing through my blood. + I would that the death-pale deer + Had come through the mountain side, + And trampled the mountain away, + And drunk up the murmuring tide; + For the winds that awakened the stars + Are blowing through my blood, + And our Mother of Peace has forgot me + Under her purple hood. + + + + +THE TRAVAIL OF PASSION + + + When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide; + When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay; + Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way + Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side, + The hyssop-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kidron stream: + We will bend down and loosen our hair over you, + That it may drop faint perfume, and be heavy with dew, + Lilies of death-pale hope, roses of passionate dream. + + + + +THE POET PLEADS WITH HIS FRIEND FOR OLD FRIENDS + + + Though you are in your shining days, + Voices among the crowd + And new friends busy with your praise, + Be not unkind or proud, + But think about old friends the most: + Time's bitter flood will rise, + Your beauty perish and be lost + For all eyes but these eyes. + + + + +HANRAHAN SPEAKS TO THE LOVERS OF HIS SONGS IN COMING DAYS + + + O, colleens, kneeling by your altar rails long hence, + When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer, + And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air + And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense; + Bend down and pray for the great sin I wove in song, + Till Maurya of the wounded heart cry a sweet cry, + And call to my beloved and me: 'No longer fly + 'Amid the hovering, piteous, penitential throng.' + + + + +AEDH PLEADS WITH THE ELEMENTAL POWERS + + + The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows + Have pulled the Immortal Rose; + And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept, + The Polar Dragon slept, + His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep: + When will he wake from sleep? + + Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire, + With your harmonious choir + Encircle her I love and sing her into peace, + That my old care may cease; + Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight + The nets of day and night. + + Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be + Like the pale cup of the sea, + When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim + Above its cloudy rim; + But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow + Whither her footsteps go. + + + + +AEDH WISHES HIS BELOVED WERE DEAD + + + Were you but lying cold and dead, + And lights were paling out of the West, + You would come hither, and bend your head, + And I would lay my head on your breast; + And you would murmur tender words, + Forgiving me, because you were dead: + Nor would you rise and hasten away, + Though you have the will of the wild birds, + But know your hair was bound and wound + About the stars and moon and sun: + O would beloved that you lay + Under the dock-leaves in the ground, + While lights were paling one by one. + + + + +AEDH WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN + + + Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, + Enwrought with golden and silver light, + The blue and the dim and the dark cloths + Of night and light and the half light, + I would spread the cloths under your feet: + But I, being poor, have only my dreams; + I have spread my dreams under your feet; + Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. + + + + +MONGAN THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS + + + I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young + And weep because I know all things now: + I have been a hazel tree and they hung + The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough + Among my leaves in times out of mind: + I became a rush that horses tread: + I became a man, a hater of the wind, + Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head + Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair + Of the woman that he loves, until he dies; + Although the rushes and the fowl of the air + Cry of his love with their pitiful cries. + + + + +NOTES + + +THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE. + +The powerful and wealthy called the gods of ancient Ireland the Tuatha +De Danaan, or the Tribes of the goddess Danu, but the poor called them, +and still sometimes call them, the Sidhe, from Aes Sidhe or Sluagh +Sidhe, the people of the Faery Hills, as these words are usually +explained. Sidhe is also Gaelic for wind, and certainly the Sidhe have +much to do with the wind. They journey in whirling winds, the winds that +were called the dance of the daughters of Herodias in the Middle Ages, +Herodias doubtless taking the place of some old goddess. When the +country people see the leaves whirling on the road they bless +themselves, because they believe the Sidhe to be passing by. They are +almost always said to wear no covering upon their heads, and to let +their hair stream out; and the great among them, for they have great and +simple, go much upon horseback. If any one becomes too much interested +in them, and sees them over much, he loses all interest in ordinary +things. I shall write a great deal elsewhere about such enchanted +persons, and can give but an example or two now. + +A woman near Gort, in Galway, says: 'There is a boy, now, of the +Cloran's; but I wouldn't for the world let them think I spoke of him; +it's two years since he came from America, and since that time he never +went to Mass, or to church, or to fairs, or to market, or to stand on +the cross roads, or to hurling, or to nothing. And if any one comes into +the house, it's into the room he'll slip, not to see them; and as to +work, he has the garden dug to bits, and the whole place smeared with +cow dung; and such a crop as was never seen; and the alders all plaited +till they look grand. One day he went as far as the chapel; but as soon +as he got to the door he turned straight round again, as if he hadn't +power to pass it. I wonder he wouldn't get the priest to read a Mass for +him, or something; but the crop he has is grand, and you may know well +he has some to help him.' One hears many stories of the kind; and a man +whose son is believed to go out riding among them at night tells me that +he is careless about everything, and lies in bed until it is late in the +day. A doctor believes this boy to be mad. Those that are at times +'away,' as it is called, know all things, but are afraid to speak. A +countryman at Kiltartan says, 'There was one of the Lydons--John--was +away for seven years, lying in his bed, but brought away at nights, and +he knew everything; and one, Kearney, up in the mountains, a cousin of +his own, lost two hoggets, and came and told him, and he knew the very +spot where they were, and told him, and he got them back again. But +_they_ were vexed at that, and took away the power, so that he never +knew anything again, no more than another.' This wisdom is the wisdom of +the fools of the Celtic stories, that was above all the wisdom of the +wise. Lomna, the fool of Fiann, had so great wisdom that his head, cut +from his body, was still able to sing and prophesy; and a writer in the +'Encyclopędia Britannica' writes that Tristram, in the oldest form of +the tale of Tristram and Iseult, drank wisdom, and madness the shadow of +wisdom, and not love, out of the magic cup. + +The great of the old times are among the Tribes of Danu, and are kings +and queens among them. Caolte was a companion of Fiann; and years after +his death he appeared to a king in a forest, and was a flaming man, that +he might lead him in the darkness. When the king asked him who he was, +he said, 'I am your candlestick.' I do not remember where I have read +this story, and I have, maybe, half forgotten it. Niam was a beautiful +woman of the Tribes of Danu, that led Oisin to the Country of the Young, +as their country is called; I have written about her in 'The Wandering +of Usheen;' and he came back, at last, to bitterness and weariness. + +Knocknarea is in Sligo, and the country people say that Maeve, still a +great queen of the western Sidhe, is buried in the cairn of stones upon +it. I have written of Clooth-na-Bare in 'The Celtic Twilight.' She 'went +all over the world, seeking a lake deep enough to drown her faery life, +of which she had grown weary, leaping from hill to hill, and setting up +a cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted, until, at last, she found +the deepest water in the world in little Lough Ia, on the top of the +bird mountain, in Sligo.' I forget, now, where I heard this story, but +it may have been from a priest at Collooney. Clooth-na-Bare would mean +the old woman of Bare, but is evidently a corruption of Cailleac Bare, +the old woman Bare, who, under the names Bare, and Berah, and Beri, and +Verah, and Dera, and Dhira, appears in the legends of many places. Mr. +O'Grady found her haunting Lough Liath high up on the top of a mountain +of the Fews, the Slieve Fuadh, or Slieve G-Cullain of old times, under +the name of the Cailleac Buillia. He describes Lough Liath as a desolate +moon-shaped lake, with made wells and sunken passages upon its borders, +and beset by marsh and heather and gray boulders, and closes his +'Flight of the Eagle' with a long rhapsody upon mountain and lake, +because of the heroic tales and beautiful old myths that have hung about +them always. He identifies the Cailleac Buillia with that Meluchra who +persuaded Fionn to go to her amid the waters of Lough Liath, and so +changed him with her enchantments, that, though she had to free him +because of the threats of the Fiana, his hair was ever afterwards as +white as snow. To this day the Tribes of the Goddess Danu that are in +the waters beckon to men, and drown them in the waters; and Bare, or +Dhira, or Meluchra, or whatever name one likes the best, is, doubtless, +the name of a mistress among them. Meluchra was daughter of Cullain; and +Cullain Mr. O'Grady calls, upon I know not what authority, a form of +Lir, the master of waters. The people of the waters have been in all +ages beautiful and changeable and lascivious, or beautiful and wise and +lonely, for water is everywhere the signature of the fruitfulness of the +body and of the fruitfulness of dreams. The white hair of Fionn may be +but another of the troubles of those that come to unearthly wisdom and +earthly trouble, and the threats and violence of the Fiana against her, +a different form of the threats and violence the country people use, to +make the Tribes of Danu give up those that are 'away.' Bare is now often +called an ugly old woman; but Dr. Joyce says that one of her old names +was Aebhin, which means beautiful. Aebhen was the goddess of the tribes +of northern Leinster; and the lover she had made immortal, and who loved +her perfectly, left her, and put on mortality, to fight among them +against the stranger, and died on the strand of Clontarf. + + +'AEDH,' 'HANRAHAN' AND 'MICHAEL ROBARTES' IN THESE POEMS. + +These are personages in 'The Secret Rose;' but, with the exception of +some of Hanrahan's and one of Aedh's poems, the poems are not out of +that book. I have used them in this book more as principles of the mind +than as actual personages. It is probable that only students of the +magical tradition will understand me when I say that 'Michael Robartes' +is fire reflected in water, and that Hanrahan is fire blown by the wind, +and that Aedh, whose name is not merely the Irish form of Hugh, but the +Irish for fire, is fire burning by itself. To put it in a different way, +Hanrahan is the simplicity of an imagination too changeable to gather +permanent possessions, or the adoration of the shepherds; and Michael +Robartes is the pride of the imagination brooding upon the greatness of +its possessions, or the adoration of the Magi; while Aedh is the myrrh +and frankincense that the imagination offers continually before all that +it loves. + + +AEDH PLEADS WITH THE ELEMENTAL POWERS. + +MONGAN THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS. + +AEDH HEARS THE CRY OF THE SEDGE. + +The Rose has been for many centuries a symbol of spiritual love and +supreme beauty. The Count Goblet D'Alviella thinks that it was once a +symbol of the sun,--itself a principal symbol of the divine nature, and +the symbolic heart of things. The lotus was in some Eastern countries +imagined blossoming upon the Tree of Life, as the Flower of Life, and is +thus represented in Assyrian bas-reliefs. Because the Rose, the flower +sacred to the Virgin Mary, and the flower that Apuleius' adventurer ate, +when he was changed out of the ass's shape and received into the +fellowship of Isis, is the western Flower of Life, I have imagined it +growing upon the Tree of Life. I once stood beside a man in Ireland when +he saw it growing there in a vision, that seemed to have rapt him out of +his body. He saw the garden of Eden walled about, and on the top of a +high mountain, as in certain medięval diagrams, and after passing the +Tree of Knowledge, on which grew fruit full of troubled faces, and +through whose branches flowed, he was told, sap that was human souls, he +came to a tall, dark tree, with little bitter fruits, and was shown a +kind of stair or ladder going up through the tree, and told to go up; +and near the top of the tree, a beautiful woman, like the Goddess of +Life associated with the tree in Assyria, gave him a rose that seemed +to have been growing upon the tree. One finds the Rose in the Irish +poets, sometimes as a religious symbol, as in the phrase, 'the Rose of +Friday,' meaning the Rose of austerity, in a Gaelic poem in Dr. Hyde's +'Religious Songs of Connacht;' and, I think, as a symbol of woman's +beauty in the Gaelic song, 'Roseen Dubh;' and a symbol of Ireland in +Mangan's adaptation of 'Roseen Dubh,' 'My Dark Rosaleen,' and in Mr. +Aubrey de Vere's 'The Little Black Rose.' I do not know any evidence to +prove whether this symbol came to Ireland with medięval Christianity, or +whether it has come down from Celtic times. I have read somewhere that a +stone engraved with a Celtic god, who holds what looks like a rose in +one hand, has been found somewhere in England; but I cannot find the +reference, though I certainly made a note of it. If the Rose was really +a symbol of Ireland among the Gaelic poets, and if 'Roseen Dubh' is +really a political poem, as some think, one may feel pretty certain that +the ancient Celts associated the Rose with Eire, or Fotla, or +Banba--goddesses who gave their names to Ireland--or with some principal +god or goddess, for such symbols are not suddenly adopted or invented, +but come out of mythology. + +I have made the Seven Lights, the constellation of the Bear, lament for +the theft of the Rose, and I have made the Dragon, the constellation +Draco, the guardian of the Rose, because these constellations move about +the pole of the heavens, the ancient Tree of Life in many countries, and +are often associated with the Tree of Life in mythology. It is this Tree +of Life that I have put into the 'Song of Mongan' under its common Irish +form of a hazel; and, because it had sometimes the stars for fruit, I +have hung upon it 'the Crooked Plough' and the 'Pilot' star, as +Gaelic-speaking Irishmen sometimes call the Bear and the North star. I +have made it an axle-tree in 'Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge,' for this +was another ancient way of representing it. + + +THE HOST OF THE AIR. + +Some writers distinguish between the Sluagh Gaoith, the host of the air, +and Sluagh Sidhe, the host of the Sidhe, and describe the host of the +air as of a peculiar malignancy. Dr. Joyce says, 'of all the different +kinds of goblins ... air demons were most dreaded by the people. They +lived among clouds, and mists, and rocks, and hated the human race with +the utmost malignity.' A very old Arann charm, which contains the words +'Send God, by his strength, between us and the host of the Sidhe, +between us and the host of the air,' seems also to distinguish among +them. I am inclined, however, to think that the distinction came in with +Christianity and its belief about the prince of the air, for the host of +the Sidhe, as I have already explained, are closely associated with the +wind. + +They are said to steal brides just after their marriage, and sometimes +in a blast of wind. A man in Galway says, 'At Aughanish there were two +couples came to the shore to be married, and one of the newly married +women was in the boat with the priest, and they going back to the +island; and a sudden blast of wind came, and the priest said some +blessed words that were able to save himself, but the girl was swept.' + +This woman was drowned; but more often the persons who are taken 'get +the touch,' as it is called, and fall into a half dream, and grow +indifferent to all things, for their true life has gone out of the +world, and is among the hills and the forts of the Sidhe. A faery doctor +has told me that his wife 'got the touch' at her marriage because there +was one of them wanted her; and the way he knew for certain was, that +when he took a pitchfork out of the rafters, and told her it was a +broom, she said, 'It is a broom.' She was, the truth is, in the magical +sleep, to which people have given a new name lately, that makes the +imagination so passive that it can be moulded by any voice in any world +into any shape. A mere likeness of some old woman, or even old animal, +some one or some thing the Sidhe have no longer a use for, is believed +to be left instead of the person who is 'away;' this some one or some +thing can, it is thought, be driven away by threats, or by violence +(though I have heard country women say that violence is wrong), which +perhaps awakes the soul out of the magical sleep. The story in the poem +is founded on an old Gaelic ballad that was sung and translated for me +by a woman at Ballisodare in County Sligo; but in the ballad the husband +found the keeners keening his wife when he got to his house. She was +'swept' at once; but the Sidhe are said to value those the most whom +they but cast into a half dream, which may last for years, for they need +the help of a living person in most of the things they do. There are +many stories of people who seem to die and be buried--though the country +people will tell you it is but some one or some thing put in their place +that dies and is buried--and yet are brought back afterwards. These +tales are perhaps memories of true awakenings out of the magical sleep, +moulded by the imagination, under the influence of a mystical doctrine +which it understands too literally, into the shape of some well-known +traditional tale. One does not hear them as one hears the others, from +the persons who are 'away,' or from their wives or husbands; and one old +man, who had often seen the Sidhe, began one of them with 'Maybe it is +all vanity.' + +Here is a tale that a friend of mine heard in the Burren hills, and it +is a type of all:-- + +'There was a girl to be married, and she didn't like the man, and she +cried when the day was coming, and said she wouldn't go along with him. +And the mother said, "Get into the bed, then, and I'll say that you're +sick." And so she did. And when the man came the mother said to him, +"You can't get her, she's sick in the bed." And he looked in and said, +"That's not my wife that's in the bed, it's some old hag." And the +mother began to cry and to roar. And he went out and got two hampers of +turf, and made a fire, that they thought he was going to burn the house +down. And when the fire was kindled, "Come out now," says he, "and we'll +see who you are, when I'll put you on the fire." And when she heard +that, she gave one leap, and was out of the house, and they saw, then, +it was an old hag she was. Well, the man asked the advice of an old +woman, and she bid him go to a faery-bush that was near, and he might +get some word of her. So he went there at night, and saw all sorts of +grand people, and they in carriages or riding on horses, and among them +he could see the girl he came to look for. So he went again to the old +woman, and she said, "If you can get the three bits of blackthorn out of +her hair, you'll get her again." So that night he went again, and that +time he only got hold of a bit of her hair. But the old woman told him +that was no use, and that he was put back now, and it might be twelve +nights before he'd get her. But on the fourth night he got the third bit +of blackthorn, and he took her, and she came away with him. He never +told the mother he had got her; but one day she saw her at a fair, and, +says she, "That's my daughter; I know her by the smile and by the laugh +of her," and she with a shawl about her head. So the husband said, +"You're right there, and hard I worked to get her." She spoke often of +the grand things she saw underground, and how she used to have wine to +drink, and to drive out in a carriage with four horses every night. And +she used to be able to see her husband when he came to look for her, and +she was greatly afraid he'd get a drop of the wine, for then he would +have come underground and never left it again. And she was glad herself +to come to earth again, and not to be left there.' + +The old Gaelic literature is full of the appeals of the Tribes of the +goddess Danu to mortals whom they would bring into their country; but +the song of Midher to the beautiful Etain, the wife of the king who was +called Echaid the ploughman, is the type of all. + +'O beautiful woman, come with me to the marvellous land where one +listens to a sweet music, where one has spring flowers in one's hair, +where the body is like snow from head to foot, where no one is sad or +silent, where teeth are white and eyebrows are black ... cheeks red like +foxglove in flower.... Ireland is beautiful, but not so beautiful as the +Great Plain I call you to. The beer of Ireland is heady, but the beer of +the Great Plain is much more heady. How marvellous is the country I am +speaking of! Youth does not grow old there. Streams with warm flood flow +there; sometimes mead, sometimes wine. Men are charming and without a +blot there, and love is not forbidden there. O woman, when you come into +my powerful country you will wear a crown of gold upon your head. I will +give you the flesh of swine, and you will have beer and milk to drink, O +beautiful woman. O beautiful woman, come with me!' + + +A CRADLE SONG. + +MICHAEL ROBARTES ASKS FORGIVENESS BECAUSE OF HIS MANY MOODS. + +I use the wind as a symbol of vague desires and hopes, not merely +because the Sidhe are in the wind, or because the wind bloweth as it +listeth, but because wind and spirit and vague desire have been +associated everywhere. A highland scholar tells me that his country +people use the wind in their talk and in their proverbs as I use it in +my poem. + + +THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS. + +The Tribes of the goddess Danu can take all shapes, and those that are +in the waters take often the shape of fish. A woman of Burren, in +Galway, says, 'There are more of them in the sea than on the land, and +they sometimes try to come over the side of the boat in the form of +fishes, for they can take their choice shape.' At other times they are +beautiful women; and another Galway woman says, 'Surely those things are +in the sea as well as on land. My father was out fishing one night off +Tyrone. And something came beside the boat that had eyes shining like +candles. And then a wave came in, and a storm rose all in a minute, and +whatever was in the wave, the weight of it had like to sink the boat. +And then they saw that it was a woman in the sea that had the shining +eyes. So my father went to the priest, and he bid him always to take a +drop of holy water and a pinch of salt out in the boat with him, and +nothing could harm him.' + +The poem was suggested to me by a Greek folk song; but the folk belief +of Greece is very like that of Ireland, and I certainly thought, when I +wrote it, of Ireland, and of the spirits that are in Ireland. An old man +who was cutting a quickset hedge near Gort, in Galway, said, only the +other day, 'One time I was cutting timber over in Inchy, and about eight +o'clock one morning, when I got there, I saw a girl picking nuts, with +her hair hanging down over her shoulders; brown hair; and she had a +good, clean face, and she was tall, and nothing on her head, and her +dress no way gaudy, but simple. And when she felt me coming she gathered +herself up, and was gone, as if the earth had swallowed her up. And I +followed her, and looked for her, but I never could see her again from +that day to this, never again.' + +The county Galway people use the word 'clean' in its old sense of fresh +and comely. + + +MICHAEL ROBARTES BIDS HIS BELOVED BE AT PEACE. + +November, the old beginning of winter, or of the victory of the Fomor, +or powers of death, and dismay, and cold, and darkness, is associated by +the Irish people with the horse-shaped Pścas, who are now mischievous +spirits, but were once Fomorian divinities. I think that they may have +some connection with the horses of Mannannan, who reigned over the +country of the dead, where the Fomorian Tethra reigned also; and the +horses of Mannannan, though they could cross the land as easily as the +sea, are constantly associated with the waves. Some neo-platonist, I +forget who, describes the sea as a symbol of the drifting indefinite +bitterness of life, and I believe there is like symbolism intended in +the many Irish voyages to the islands of enchantment, or that there was, +at any rate, in the mythology out of which these stories have been +shaped. I follow much Irish and other mythology, and the magical +tradition, in associating the North with night and sleep, and the East, +the place of sunrise, with hope, and the South, the place of the sun +when at its height, with passion and desire, and the West, the place of +sunset, with fading and dreaming things. + + +MONGAN LAMENTS THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED. + +HANRAHAN LAMENTS BECAUSE OF HIS WANDERINGS. + +My deer and hound are properly related to the deer and hound that +flicker in and out of the various tellings of the Arthurian legends, +leading different knights upon adventures, and to the hounds and to the +hornless deer at the beginning of, I think, all tellings of Oisin's +journey to the country of the young. The hound is certainly related to +the Hounds of Annwvyn or of Hades, who are white, and have red ears, and +were heard, and are, perhaps, still heard by Welsh peasants following +some flying thing in the night winds; and is probably related to the +hounds that Irish country people believe will awake and seize the souls +of the dead if you lament them too loudly or too soon, and to the hound +the son of Setanta killed, on what was certainly, in the first form of +the tale, a visit to the Celtic Hades. An old woman told a friend and +myself that she saw what she thought were white birds, flying over an +enchanted place, but found, when she got near, that they had dog's +heads; and I do not doubt that my hound and these dog-headed birds are +of the same family. I got my hound and deer out of a last century Gaelic +poem about Oisin's journey to the country of the young. After the +hunting of the hornless deer, that leads him to the seashore, and while +he is riding over the sea with Niam, he sees amid the waters--I have not +the Gaelic poem by me, and describe it from memory--a young man +following a girl who has a golden apple, and afterwards a hound with one +red ear following a deer with no horns. This hound and this deer seem +plain images of the desire of man 'which is for the woman,' and 'the +desire of the woman which is for the desire of the man,' and of all +desires that are as these. I have read them in this way in 'The +Wanderings of Usheen' or Oisin, and have made my lover sigh because he +has seen in their faces 'the immortal desire of immortals.' A solar +mythologist would perhaps say that the girl with the golden apple was +once the winter, or night, carrying the sun away, and the deer without +horns, like the boar without bristles, darkness flying the light. He +would certainly, I think, say that when Cuchullain, whom Professor Rhys +calls a solar hero, hunted the enchanted deer of Slieve Fuadh, because +the battle fury was still on him, he was the sun pursuing clouds, or +cold, or darkness. I have understood them in this sense in 'Hanrahan +laments because of his wandering,' and made Hanrahan long for the day +when they, fragments of ancestral darkness, will overthrow the world. +The desire of the woman, the flying darkness, it is all one! The +image--a cross, a man preaching in the wilderness, a dancing Salome, a +lily in a girl's hand, a flame leaping, a globe with wings, a pale +sunset over still waters--is an eternal act; but our understandings are +temporal and understand but a little at a time. + +The man in my poem who has a hazel wand may have been Aengus, Master of +Love; and I have made the boar without bristles come out of the West, +because the place of sunset was in Ireland, as in other countries, a +place of symbolic darkness and death. + + +THE CAP AND BELLS. + +I dreamed this story exactly as I have written it, and dreamed another +long dream after it, trying to make out its meaning, and whether I was +to write it in prose or verse. The first dream was more a vision than a +dream, for it was beautiful and coherent, and gave me the sense of +illumination and exaltation that one gets from visions, while the second +dream was confused and meaningless. The poem has always meant a great +deal to me, though, as is the way with symbolic poems, it has not always +meant quite the same thing. Blake would have said 'the authors are in +eternity,' and I am quite sure they can only be questioned in dreams. + + +THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG. + +All over Ireland there are prophecies of the coming rout of the enemies +of Ireland, in a certain Valley of the Black Pig, and these prophecies +are, no doubt, now, as they were in the Fenian days, a political force. +I have heard of one man who would not give any money to the Land League, +because the Battle could not be until the close of the century; but, as +a rule, periods of trouble bring prophecies of its near coming. A few +years before my time, an old man who lived at Lisadell, in Sligo, used +to fall down in a fit and rave out descriptions of the Battle; and a man +in Sligo has told me that it will be so great a battle that the horses +shall go up to their fetlocks in blood, and that their girths, when it +is over, will rot from their bellies for lack of a hand to unbuckle +them. The battle is a mythological battle, and the black pig is one with +the bristleless boar, that killed Dearmod, in November, upon the western +end of Ben Bulben; Misroide MacDatha's sow, whose carving brought on so +great a battle; 'the croppy black sow,' and 'the cutty black sow' of +Welsh November rhymes ('Celtic Heathendom,' pages 509-516); the boar +that killed Adonis; the boar that killed Attis; and the pig embodiment +of Typhon ('Golden Bough,' II. pages 26, 31). The pig seems to have been +originally a genius of the corn, and, seemingly because the too great +power of their divinity makes divine things dangerous to mortals, its +flesh was forbidden to many eastern nations; but as the meaning of the +prohibition was forgotten, abhorrence took the place of reverence, pigs +and boars grew into types of evil, and were described as the enemies of +the very gods they once typified ('Golden Bough,' II. 26-31, 56-57). The +Pig would, therefore, become the Black Pig, a type of cold and of winter +that awake in November, the old beginning of winter, to do battle with +the summer, and with the fruit and leaves, and finally, as I suggest; +and as I believe, for the purposes of poetry; of the darkness that will +at last destroy the gods and the world. The country people say there is +no shape for a spirit to take so dangerous as the shape of a pig; and a +Galway blacksmith--and blacksmiths are thought to be especially +protected--says he would be afraid to meet a pig on the road at night; +and another Galway man tells this story: 'There was a man coming the +road from Gort to Garryland one night, and he had a drop taken; and +before him, on the road, he saw a pig walking; and having a drop in, he +gave a shout, and made a kick at it, and bid it get out of that. And by +the time he got home, his arm was swelled from the shoulder to be as big +as a bag, and he couldn't use his hand with the pain of it. And his wife +brought him, after a few days, to a woman that used to do cures at +Rahasane. And on the road all she could do would hardly keep him from +lying down to sleep on the grass. And when they got to the woman she +knew all that happened; and, says she, it's well for you that your wife +didn't let you fall asleep on the grass, for if you had done that but +even for one instant, you'd be a lost man.' + +It is possible that bristles were associated with fertility, as the tail +certainly was, for a pig's tail is stuck into the ground in Courland, +that the corn may grow abundantly, and the tails of pigs, and other +animal embodiments of the corn genius, are dragged over the ground to +make it fertile in different countries. Professor Rhys, who considers +the bristleless boar a symbol of darkness and cold, rather than of +winter and cold, thinks it was without bristles because the darkness is +shorn away by the sun. It may have had different meanings, just as the +scourging of the man-god has had different though not contradictory +meanings in different epochs of the world. + +The Battle should, I believe, be compared with three other battles; a +battle the Sidhe are said to fight when a person is being taken away by +them; a battle they are said to fight in November for the harvest; the +great battle the Tribes of the goddess Danu fought, according to the +Gaelic chroniclers, with the Fomor at Moy Tura, or the Towery Plain. + +I have heard of the battle over the dying both in County Galway and in +the Isles of Arann, an old Arann fisherman having told me that it was +fought over two of his children, and that he found blood in a box he had +for keeping fish, when it was over; and I have written about it, and +given examples elsewhere. A faery doctor, on the borders of Galway and +Clare, explained it as a battle between the friends and enemies of the +dying, the one party trying to take them, the other trying to save them +from being taken. It may once, when the land of the Sidhe was the only +other world, and when every man who died was carried thither, have +always accompanied death. I suggest that the battle between the Tribes +of the goddess Danu, the powers of light, and warmth, and fruitfulness, +and goodness, and the Fomor, the powers of darkness, and cold, and +barrenness, and badness upon the Towery Plain, was the establishment of +the habitable world, the rout of the ancestral darkness; that the battle +among the Sidhe for the harvest is the annual battle of summer and +winter; that the battle among the Sidhe at a man's death is the battle +of life and death; and that the battle of the Black Pig is the battle +between the manifest world and the ancestral darkness at the end of all +things; and that all these battles are one, the battle of all things +with shadowy decay. Once a symbolism has possessed the imagination of +large numbers of men, it becomes, as I believe, an embodiment of +disembodied powers, and repeats itself in dreams and visions, age after +age. + + +THE SECRET ROSE. + +I find that I have unintentionally changed the old story of Conchobar's +death. He did not see the crucifixion in a vision, but was told about +it. He had been struck by a ball, made of the dried brain of a dead +enemy, and hurled out of a sling; and this ball had been left in his +head, and his head had been mended, the Book of Leinster says, with +thread of gold because his hair was like gold. Keating, a writer of the +time of Elizabeth, says, 'In that state did he remain seven years, until +the Friday on which Christ was crucified, according to some historians; +and when he saw the unusual changes of the creation and the eclipse of +the sun and the moon at its full, he asked of Bucrach, a Leinster +Druid, who was along with him, what was it that brought that unusual +change upon the planets of Heaven and Earth. "Jesus Christ, the son of +God," said the Druid, "who is now being crucified by the Jews." "That is +a pity," said Conchobar; "were I in his presence I would kill those who +were putting him to death." And with that he brought out his sword, and +rushed at a woody grove which was convenient to him, and began to cut +and fell it; and what he said was, that if he were among the Jews that +was the usage he would give them, and from the excessiveness of his fury +which seized upon him, the ball started out of his head, and some of the +brain came after it, and in that way he died. The wood of Lanshraigh, in +Feara Rois, is the name by which that shrubby wood is called.' + +I have imagined Cuchullain meeting Fand 'walking among flaming dew.' The +story of their love is one of the most beautiful of our old tales. Two +birds, bound one to another with a chain of gold, came to a lake side +where Cuchullain and the host of Uladh was encamped, and sang so sweetly +that all the host fell into a magic sleep. Presently they took the shape +of two beautiful women, and cast a magical weakness upon Cuchullain, in +which he lay for a year. At the year's end an Aengus, who was probably +Aengus the master of love, one of the greatest of the children of the +goddess Danu, came and sat upon his bedside, and sang how Fand, the wife +of Mannannan, the master of the sea, and of the islands of the dead, +loved him; and that if he would come into the country of the gods, where +there was wine and gold and silver, Fand, and Laban her sister, would +heal him of his magical weakness. Cuchullain went to the country of the +gods, and, after being for a month the lover of Fand, made her a +promise to meet her at a place called 'the Yew at the Strand's End,' and +came back to the earth. Emer, his mortal wife, won his love again, and +Mannannan came to 'the Yew at the Strand's End,' and carried Fand away. +When Cuchullain saw her going, his love for her fell upon him again, and +he went mad, and wandered among the mountains without food or drink, +until he was at last cured by a Druid drink of forgetfulness. + +I have founded the man 'who drove the gods out of their Liss,' or fort, +upon something I have read about Caolte after the battle of Gabra, when +almost all his companions were killed, driving the gods out of their +Liss, either at Osraighe, now Ossory, or at Eas Ruaidh, now Asseroe, a +waterfall at Ballyshannon, where Ilbreac, one of the children of the +goddess Danu, had a Liss. I am writing away from most of my books, and +have not been able to find the passage; but I certainly read it +somewhere. + +I have founded 'the proud dreaming king' upon Fergus, the son of Roigh, +the legendary poet of 'the quest of the bull of Cualge,' as he is in the +ancient story of Deirdre, and in modern poems by Ferguson. He married +Nessa, and Ferguson makes him tell how she took him 'captive in a single +look.' + + 'I am but an empty shade, + Far from life and passion laid; + Yet does sweet remembrance thrill + All my shadowy being still.' + +Presently, because of his great love, he gave up his throne to +Conchobar, her son by another, and lived out his days feasting, and +fighting, and hunting. His promise never to refuse a feast from a +certain comrade, and the mischief that came by his promise, and the +vengeance he took afterwards, are a principal theme of the poets. I +have explained my imagination of him in 'Fergus and the Druid,' and in a +little song in the second act of 'The Countess Kathleen.' + + * * * * * + +I have founded him 'who sold tillage, and house, and goods,' upon +something in 'The Red Pony,' a folk tale in Mr. Larminie's 'West Irish +Folk Tales.' A young man 'saw a light before him on the high road. When +he came as far, there was an open box on the road, and a light coming up +out of it. He took up the box. There was a lock of hair in it. Presently +he had to go to become the servant of a king for his living. There were +eleven boys. When they were going out into the stable at ten o'clock, +each of them took a light but he. He took no candle at all with him. +Each of them went into his own stable. When he went into his stable he +opened the box. He left it in a hole in the wall. The light was great. +It was twice as much as in the other stables.' The king hears of it, and +makes him show him the box. The king says, 'You must go and bring me the +woman to whom the hair belongs.' In the end, the young man, and not the +king, marries the woman. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Wind Among the Reeds, by William Butler Yeats + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS *** + +***** This file should be named 32233-8.txt or 32233-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/2/3/32233/ + +Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wind Among the Reeds + +Author: William Butler Yeats + +Release Date: May 3, 2010 [EBook #32233] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS *** + + + + +Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + + + + +<h2>The Wind Among the Reeds</h2> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + + + +<h1> +<i>The</i> WIND AMONG<br /> +THE REEDS</h1> + +<h3><i>By</i></h3> + +<h2>WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS</h2> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 40px;"> +<img src="images/frontis.jpg" width="40" height="49" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class='frontend'>LONDON · ELKIN MATHEWS<br /> +VIGO STREET · W · MDCCCCIII</p> + + +<p class='frontend'>FOURTH EDITION.</p> + + + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="toc"> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Hosting of the Sidhe</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Everlasting Voices</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Moods</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aedh tells of the Rose in his Heart</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Host of the Air</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Breasal the Fisherman</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Cradle Song</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Into the Twilight</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Song of Wandering Aengus</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Song of the old Mother</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Fiddler of Dooney</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Heart of the Woman</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aedh Laments the Loss of Love</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Mongan laments the Change that has come upon him and his Beloved</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Michael Robartes bids his Beloved be at Peace</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_24">24</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hanrahan reproves the Curlew</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Michael Robartes remembers forgotten Beauty</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Poet to his Beloved</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aedh gives his Beloved certain Rhymes</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">To my Heart, bidding it have no Fear</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Cap and Bells</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Valley of the Black Pig</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Michael Robartes asks Forgiveness because of his many Moods</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aedh tells of a Valley full of Lovers</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aedh tells of the perfect Beauty</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aedh thinks of those who have spoken Evil of his Beloved</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Blessed</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Secret Rose</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hanrahan laments because of his Wanderings</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Travail of Passion</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Poet pleads with his Friend for old Friends</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_54">54</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hanrahan speaks to the Lovers of his Songs in coming Days</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aedh pleads with the Elemental Powers</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aedh wishes his Beloved were Dead</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Mongan thinks of his past Greatness</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Notes</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr> +</table> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The host is riding from Knocknarea<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Caolte tossing his burning hair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Niamh calling <i>Away, come away:</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Empty your heart of its mortal dream.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And if any gaze on our rushing band,</i><br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span><span class="i0"><i>We come between him and the deed of his hand,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>We come between him and the hope of his heart</i>.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And where is there hope or deed as fair?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Caolte tossing his burning hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Niamh calling <i>Away, come away</i>.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE EVERLASTING VOICES</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O sweet everlasting Voices be still;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Go to the guards of the heavenly fold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bid them wander obeying your will<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flame under flame, till Time be no more;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have you not heard that our hearts are old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That you call in birds, in wind on the hill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O sweet everlasting Voices be still.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE MOODS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Time drops in decay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like a candle burnt out,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the mountains and woods<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have their day, have their day;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What one in the rout<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the fire-born moods,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has fallen away?<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p> +<h2>AEDH TELLS OF THE ROSE IN HIS HEART</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +<span class="i0">I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE HOST OF THE AIR</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O'Driscoll drove with a song,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wild duck and the drake,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the tall and the tufted reeds<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the drear Hart Lake.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And he saw how the reeds grew dark<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At the coming of night tide,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And dreamed of the long dim hair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Bridget his bride.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He heard while he sang and dreamed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A piper piping away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And never was piping so sad,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And never was piping so gay.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And he saw young men and young girls<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who danced on a level place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Bridget his bride among them,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a sad and a gay face.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The dancers crowded about him,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And many a sweet thing said,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And a young man brought him red wine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And a young girl white bread.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But Bridget drew him by the sleeve,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Away from the merry bands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To old men playing at cards<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a twinkling of ancient hands.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The bread and the wine had a doom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For these were the host of the air;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He sat and played in a dream<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of her long dim hair.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He played with the merry old men<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thought not of evil chance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Until one bore Bridget his bride<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Away from the merry dance.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He bore her away in his arms,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The handsomest young man there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his neck and his breast and his arms<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were drowned in her long dim hair.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O'Driscoll scattered the cards<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And out of his dream awoke:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Old men and young men and young girls<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were gone like a drifting smoke;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But he heard high up in the air<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A piper piping away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And never was piping so sad,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And never was piping so gay.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p> +<h2>BREASAL THE FISHERMAN</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Although you hide in the ebb and flow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the pale tide when the moon has set,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The people of coming days will know<br /></span> +<span class="i0">About the casting out of my net,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And how you have leaped times out of mind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Over the little silver cords,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And think that you were hard and unkind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And blame you with many bitter words.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p> +<h2>A CRADLE SONG</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The Danann children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I kiss my wailing child and press it to my breast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hear the narrow graves calling my child and me.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Desolate winds that cry over the wandering sea;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Desolate winds that hover in the flaming West;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Desolate winds that beat the doors of Heaven, and beat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The doors of Hell and blow there many a whimpering ghost;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O heart the winds have shaken; the unappeasable host<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is comelier than candles before Maurya's feet.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p> +<h2>INTO THE TWILIGHT</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Laugh heart again in the gray twilight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Your mother Eire is always young,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dew ever shining and twilight gray;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though hope fall from you and love decay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For there the mystical brotherhood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of sun and moon and hollow and wood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And river and stream work out their will;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And God stands winding His lonely horn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And time and the world are ever in flight;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And love is less kind than the gray twilight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I went out to the hazel wood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because a fire was in my head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And cut and peeled a hazel wand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hooked a berry to a thread;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And when white moths were on the wing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And moth-like stars were flickering out,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I dropped the berry in a stream<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And caught a little silver trout.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When I had laid it on the floor<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I went to blow the fire a-flame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But something rustled on the floor,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And someone called me by my name:<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +<span class="i0">It had become a glimmering girl<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With apple blossom in her hair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who called me by my name and ran<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And faded through the brightening air.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Though I am old with wandering<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through hollow lands and hilly lands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I will find out where she has gone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And kiss her lips and take her hands;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And walk among long dappled grass,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And pluck till time and times are done,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The silver apples of the moon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The golden apples of the sun.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And then I must scrub and bake and sweep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the young lie long and dream in their bed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And their day goes over in idleness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While I must work because I am old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Folk dance like a wave of the sea;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My brother in Moharabuiee.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I passed my brother and cousin:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They read in their books of prayer;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I read in my book of songs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I bought at the Sligo fair.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When we come at the end of time,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To Peter sitting in state,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He will smile on the three old spirits,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But call me first through the gate;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For the good are always the merry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Save by an evil chance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the merry love the fiddle<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the merry love to dance:<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And when the folk there spy me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They will all come up to me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And dance like a wave of the sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE HEART OF THE WOMAN</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O what to me the little room<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That was brimmed up with prayer and rest;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He bade me out into the gloom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And my breast lies upon his breast.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O what to me my mother's care,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The house where I was safe and warm;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The shadowy blossom of my hair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will hide us from the bitter storm.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O hiding hair and dewy eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am no more with life and death,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My heart upon his warm heart lies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My breath is mixed into his breath.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p> +<h2>AEDH LAMENTS THE LOSS OF LOVE</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I had a beautiful friend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And dreamed that the old despair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would end in love in the end:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She looked in my heart one day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And saw your image was there;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She has gone weeping away.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p> +<h2>MONGAN LAMENTS THE CHANGE +THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND +HIS BELOVED</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have been changed to a hound with one red ear;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire and fear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Under my feet that they follow you night and day.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +<span class="i0">A man with a hazel wand came without sound;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He changed me suddenly; I was looking another way;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And now my calling is but the calling of a hound;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Time and Birth and Change are hurrying by.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I would that the boar without bristles had come from the West<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p> +<h2>MICHAEL ROBARTES BIDS HIS +BELOVED BE AT PEACE</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The East her hidden joy before the morning break,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire:<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> +<span class="i0">O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> +<h2>HANRAHAN REPROVES THE +CURLEW</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O, curlew, cry no more in the air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or only to the waters in the West;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because your crying brings to my mind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That was shaken out over my breast:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There is enough evil in the crying of wind.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p> +<h2>MICHAEL ROBARTES REMEMBERS +FORGOTTEN BEAUTY</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When my arms wrap you round I press<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My heart upon the loveliness<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That has long faded from the world;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In shadowy pools, when armies fled;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The love-tales wove with silken thread<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By dreaming ladies upon cloth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That has made fat the murderous moth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The roses that of old time were<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Woven by ladies in their hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dew-cold lilies ladies bore<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Through many a sacred corridor<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where such gray clouds of incense rose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That only the gods' eyes did not close:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For that pale breast and lingering hand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Come from a more dream-heavy land,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A more dream-heavy hour than this;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And when you sigh from kiss to kiss<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I hear white Beauty sighing, too,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For hours when all must fade like dew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But flame on flame, deep under deep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Throne over throne, where in half sleep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their swords upon their iron knees<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Brood her high lonely mysteries.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p> +<h2>A POET TO HIS BELOVED</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I bring you with reverent hands<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The books of my numberless dreams;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">White woman that passion has worn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And with heart more old than the horn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">White woman with numberless dreams<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I bring you my passionate rhyme.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p> +<h2>AEDH GIVES HIS BELOVED CERTAIN +RHYMES</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Fasten your hair with a golden pin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bind up every wandering tress;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It worked at them, day out, day in,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Building a sorrowful loveliness<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Out of the battles of old times.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bind up your long hair and sigh;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all men's hearts must burn and beat;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And candle-like foam on the dim sand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Live but to light your passing feet.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p> +<h2>TO MY HEART, BIDDING IT HAVE +NO FEAR</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Be you still, be you still, trembling heart;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Remember the wisdom out of the old days:<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And the winds that blow through the starry ways,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Cover over and hide, for he has no part</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>With the proud, majestical multitude.</i></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE CAP AND BELLS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The jester walked in the garden:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The garden had fallen still;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He bade his soul rise upward<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And stand on her window-sill.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">It rose in a straight blue garment,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When owls began to call:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It had grown wise-tongued by thinking<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of a quiet and light footfall;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But the young queen would not listen;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She rose in her pale night gown;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She drew in the heavy casement<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And pushed the latches down.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He bade his heart go to her,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the owls called out no more;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In a red and quivering garment<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It sang to her through the door.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of a flutter of flower-like hair;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But she took up her fan from the table<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And waved it off on the air.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'I have cap and bells,' he pondered,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'I will send them to her and die;'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And when the morning whitened<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He left them where she went by.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">She laid them upon her bosom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Under a cloud of her hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And her red lips sang them a love song:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till stars grew out of the air.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">She opened her door and her window,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the heart and the soul came through,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To her right hand came the red one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To her left hand came the blue.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">They set up a noise like crickets,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A chattering wise and sweet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And her hair was a folded flower<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the quiet of love in her feet.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We who still labour by the cromlec on the shore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p> +<h2>MICHAEL ROBARTES ASKS FORGIVENESS +BECAUSE OF HIS +MANY MOODS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">If this importunate heart trouble your peace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With words lighter than air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or hopes that in mere hoping flicker and cease;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crumple the rose in your hair;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And cover your lips with odorous twilight and say,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'O Hearts of wind-blown flame!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'O Winds, elder than changing of night and day,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> +<span class="i0">'That murmuring and longing came,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'From marble cities loud with tabors of old<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'In dove-gray faery lands;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'From battle banners fold upon purple fold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Queens wrought with glimmering hands;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'That saw young Niamh hover with love-lorn face<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Above the wandering tide;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And lingered in the hidden desolate place,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Where the last Phœnix died<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And wrapped the flames above his holy head;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And still murmur and long:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'O Piteous Hearts, changing till change be dead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'In a tumultuous song:'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And cover the pale blossoms of your breast<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +<span class="i0">With your dim heavy hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And trouble with a sigh for all things longing for rest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The odorous twilight there.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> +<h2>AEDH TELLS OF A VALLEY FULL +OF LOVERS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I cried in my dream '<i>O women bid the young men lay</i><br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +<span class="i0"><i>'Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>'Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>'Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away.</i>'<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p> +<h2>AEDH TELLS OF THE PERFECT +BEAUTY</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The poets labouring all their days<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To build a perfect beauty in rhyme<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are overthrown by a woman's gaze<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And therefore my heart will bow, when dew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is dropping sleep, until God burn time,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Before the unlabouring stars and you.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p> +<h2>AEDH HEARS THE CRY OF THE +SEDGE</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I wander by the edge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of this desolate lake<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where wind cries in the sedge<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Until the axle break</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>That keeps the stars in their round</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And hands hurl in the deep</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The banners of East and West</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And the girdle of light is unbound,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Your breast will not lie by the breast</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Of your beloved in sleep</i>.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p> +<h2>AEDH THINKS OF THOSE WHO HAVE +SPOKEN EVIL OF HIS BELOVED</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And dream about the great and their pride;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They have spoken against you everywhere,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But weigh this song with the great and their pride;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I made it out of a mouthful of air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their children's children shall say they have lied.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE BLESSED</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Cumhal called out, bending his head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till Dathi came and stood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a blink in his eyes at the cave mouth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Between the wind and the wood.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And Cumhal said, bending his knees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'I have come by the windy way<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'To gather the half of your blessedness<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And learn to pray when you pray.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'I can bring you salmon out of the streams<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And heron out of the skies.'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But Dathi folded his hands and smiled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the secrets of God in his eyes.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All manner of blessed souls,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Women and children, young men with books,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And old men with croziers and stoles.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Praise God and God's mother,' Dathi said,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'For God and God's mother have sent<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'The blessedest souls that walk in the world<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'To fill your heart with content.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'And which is the blessedest,' Cumhal said,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Where all are comely and good?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Is it these that with golden thuribles<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Are singing about the wood?'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'My eyes are blinking,' Dathi said,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'With the secrets of God half blind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'But I can see where the wind goes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And follow the way of the wind;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'And blessedness goes where the wind goes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And when it is gone we are dead;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'I see the blessedest soul in the world<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And he nods a drunken head.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'O blessedness comes in the night and the day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And whither the wise heart knows;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And one has seen in the redness of wine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'The Incorruptible Rose,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'That drowsily drops faint leaves on him<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And the sweetness of desire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'While time and the world are ebbing away<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'In twilights of dew and of fire.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE SECRET ROSE</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In druid vapour and make the torches dim;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who met Fand walking among flaming dew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By a gray shore where the wind never blew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And him who drove the gods out of their liss,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And till a hundred morns had flowered red,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Feasted and wept the barrows of his dead;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sought through lands and islands numberless years,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Until he found with laughter and with tears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A woman, of so shining loveliness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A little stolen tress. I, too, await<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When shall the stars be blown about the sky,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p> +<h2>HANRAHAN LAMENTS BECAUSE OF +HIS WANDERINGS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O where is our Mother of Peace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nodding her purple hood?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the winds that awakened the stars<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are blowing through my blood.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I would that the death-pale deer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had come through the mountain side,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And trampled the mountain away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And drunk up the murmuring tide;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the winds that awakened the stars<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are blowing through my blood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And our Mother of Peace has forgot me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Under her purple hood.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE TRAVAIL OF PASSION</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hyssop-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kidron stream:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We will bend down and loosen our hair over you,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +<span class="i0">That it may drop faint perfume, and be heavy with dew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lilies of death-pale hope, roses of passionate dream.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE POET PLEADS WITH HIS FRIEND +FOR OLD FRIENDS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Though you are in your shining days,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Voices among the crowd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And new friends busy with your praise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be not unkind or proud,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But think about old friends the most:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Time's bitter flood will rise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your beauty perish and be lost<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For all eyes but these eyes.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p> +<h2>HANRAHAN SPEAKS TO THE LOVERS +OF HIS SONGS IN COMING DAYS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O, colleens, kneeling by your altar rails long hence,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bend down and pray for the great sin I wove in song,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Till Maurya of the wounded heart cry a sweet cry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And call to my beloved and me: 'No longer fly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Amid the hovering, piteous, penitential throng.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p> +<h2>AEDH PLEADS WITH THE +ELEMENTAL POWERS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have pulled the Immortal Rose;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Polar Dragon slept,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When will he wake from sleep?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With your harmonious choir<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That my old care may cease;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The nets of day and night.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like the pale cup of the sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Above its cloudy rim;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whither her footsteps go.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p> +<h2>AEDH WISHES HIS BELOVED WERE +DEAD</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Were you but lying cold and dead,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lights were paling out of the West,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You would come hither, and bend your head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I would lay my head on your breast;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And you would murmur tender words,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forgiving me, because you were dead:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor would you rise and hasten away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though you have the will of the wild birds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But know your hair was bound and wound<br /></span> +<span class="i0">About the stars and moon and sun:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O would beloved that you lay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Under the dock-leaves in the ground,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While lights were paling one by one.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p> +<h2>AEDH WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS +OF HEAVEN</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Enwrought with golden and silver light,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The blue and the dim and the dark cloths<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of night and light and the half light,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I would spread the cloths under your feet:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But I, being poor, have only my dreams;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have spread my dreams under your feet;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p> +<h2>MONGAN THINKS OF HIS PAST +GREATNESS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And weep because I know all things now:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have been a hazel tree and they hung<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Among my leaves in times out of mind:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I became a rush that horses tread:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I became a man, a hater of the wind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Although the rushes and the fowl of the air<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p> + + + +<h2>NOTES</h2> + + + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Hosting of the Sidhe.</span></h3> + +<p>The powerful and wealthy called the gods of +ancient Ireland the Tuatha De Danaan, or the +Tribes of the goddess Danu, but the poor called +them, and still sometimes call them, the Sidhe, +from Aes Sidhe or Sluagh Sidhe, the people +of the Faery Hills, as these words are usually +explained. Sidhe is also Gaelic for wind, and +certainly the Sidhe have much to do with the +wind. They journey in whirling winds, the +winds that were called the dance of the daughters +of Herodias in the Middle Ages, Herodias +doubtless taking the place of some old +goddess. When the country people see the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +leaves whirling on the road they bless themselves, +because they believe the Sidhe to be +passing by. They are almost always said to +wear no covering upon their heads, and to let +their hair stream out; and the great among +them, for they have great and simple, go much +upon horseback. If any one becomes too much +interested in them, and sees them over much, +he loses all interest in ordinary things. I +shall write a great deal elsewhere about such +enchanted persons, and can give but an example +or two now.</p> + +<p>A woman near Gort, in Galway, says: +'There is a boy, now, of the Cloran's; but I +wouldn't for the world let them think I spoke +of him; it's two years since he came from +America, and since that time he never went to +Mass, or to church, or to fairs, or to market, +or to stand on the cross roads, or to hurling, +or to nothing. And if any one comes into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> +house, it's into the room he'll slip, not to see +them; and as to work, he has the garden dug +to bits, and the whole place smeared with cow +dung; and such a crop as was never seen; and +the alders all plaited till they look grand. +One day he went as far as the chapel; but as +soon as he got to the door he turned straight +round again, as if he hadn't power to pass it. +I wonder he wouldn't get the priest to read a +Mass for him, or something; but the crop he +has is grand, and you may know well he has +some to help him.' One hears many stories +of the kind; and a man whose son is believed +to go out riding among them at night tells me +that he is careless about everything, and lies +in bed until it is late in the day. A doctor +believes this boy to be mad. Those that are +at times 'away,' as it is called, know all +things, but are afraid to speak. A countryman +at Kiltartan says, 'There was one of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> +Lydons—John—was away for seven years, +lying in his bed, but brought away at nights, +and he knew everything; and one, Kearney, +up in the mountains, a cousin of his own, lost +two hoggets, and came and told him, and he +knew the very spot where they were, and told +him, and he got them back again. But <i>they</i> +were vexed at that, and took away the power, +so that he never knew anything again, no more +than another.' This wisdom is the wisdom of +the fools of the Celtic stories, that was above +all the wisdom of the wise. Lomna, the fool +of Fiann, had so great wisdom that his head, +cut from his body, was still able to sing and +prophesy; and a writer in the 'Encyclopædia +Britannica' writes that Tristram, in the oldest +form of the tale of Tristram and Iseult, drank +wisdom, and madness the shadow of wisdom, +and not love, out of the magic cup.</p> + +<p>The great of the old times are among the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> +Tribes of Danu, and are kings and queens +among them. Caolte was a companion of +Fiann; and years after his death he appeared +to a king in a forest, and was a flaming man, +that he might lead him in the darkness. When +the king asked him who he was, he said, 'I am +your candlestick.' I do not remember where +I have read this story, and I have, maybe, half +forgotten it. Niam was a beautiful woman of +the Tribes of Danu, that led Oisin to the +Country of the Young, as their country is +called; I have written about her in 'The +Wandering of Usheen;' and he came back, +at last, to bitterness and weariness.</p> + +<p>Knocknarea is in Sligo, and the country +people say that Maeve, still a great queen of +the western Sidhe, is buried in the cairn of +stones upon it. I have written of Clooth-na-Bare +in 'The Celtic Twilight.' She 'went +all over the world, seeking a lake deep enough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> +to drown her faery life, of which she had grown +weary, leaping from hill to hill, and setting up +a cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted, +until, at last, she found the deepest water in +the world in little Lough Ia, on the top of the +bird mountain, in Sligo.' I forget, now, +where I heard this story, but it may have been +from a priest at Collooney. Clooth-na-Bare +would mean the old woman of Bare, but is +evidently a corruption of Cailleac Bare, the old +woman Bare, who, under the names Bare, and +Berah, and Beri, and Verah, and Dera, and +Dhira, appears in the legends of many places. +Mr. O'Grady found her haunting Lough Liath +high up on the top of a mountain of the Fews, +the Slieve Fuadh, or Slieve G-Cullain of old +times, under the name of the Cailleac Buillia. +He describes Lough Liath as a desolate moon-shaped +lake, with made wells and sunken passages +upon its borders, and beset by marsh and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +heather and gray boulders, and closes his +'Flight of the Eagle' with a long rhapsody +upon mountain and lake, because of the heroic +tales and beautiful old myths that have hung +about them always. He identifies the Cailleac +Buillia with that Meluchra who persuaded +Fionn to go to her amid the waters of Lough +Liath, and so changed him with her enchantments, +that, though she had to free him because +of the threats of the Fiana, his hair was ever +afterwards as white as snow. To this day the +Tribes of the Goddess Danu that are in the +waters beckon to men, and drown them in the +waters; and Bare, or Dhira, or Meluchra, or +whatever name one likes the best, is, doubtless, +the name of a mistress among them. +Meluchra was daughter of Cullain; and Cullain +Mr. O'Grady calls, upon I know not what +authority, a form of Lir, the master of waters. +The people of the waters have been in all ages<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> +beautiful and changeable and lascivious, or +beautiful and wise and lonely, for water is +everywhere the signature of the fruitfulness of +the body and of the fruitfulness of dreams. +The white hair of Fionn may be but another of +the troubles of those that come to unearthly +wisdom and earthly trouble, and the threats +and violence of the Fiana against her, a different +form of the threats and violence the country +people use, to make the Tribes of Danu give +up those that are 'away.' Bare is now often +called an ugly old woman; but Dr. Joyce says +that one of her old names was Aebhin, which +means beautiful. Aebhen was the goddess of +the tribes of northern Leinster; and the lover +she had made immortal, and who loved her +perfectly, left her, and put on mortality, to +fight among them against the stranger, and +died on the strand of Clontarf.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">'Aedh,' 'Hanrahan' and 'Michael +Robartes' in these Poems.</span></h3> + +<p>These are personages in 'The Secret Rose;' +but, with the exception of some of Hanrahan's +and one of Aedh's poems, the poems are not +out of that book. I have used them in this +book more as principles of the mind than as +actual personages. It is probable that only +students of the magical tradition will understand +me when I say that 'Michael Robartes' +is fire reflected in water, and that Hanrahan +is fire blown by the wind, and that Aedh, +whose name is not merely the Irish form of +Hugh, but the Irish for fire, is fire burning by +itself. To put it in a different way, Hanrahan +is the simplicity of an imagination too changeable +to gather permanent possessions, or the +adoration of the shepherds; and Michael<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> +Robartes is the pride of the imagination brooding +upon the greatness of its possessions, or +the adoration of the Magi; while Aedh is the +myrrh and frankincense that the imagination +offers continually before all that it loves.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Aedh pleads with the Elemental Powers.</span></h3> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Mongan thinks of his past Greatness.</span></h3> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge.</span></h3> + +<p>The Rose has been for many centuries a symbol +of spiritual love and supreme beauty. The +Count Goblet D'Alviella thinks that it was +once a symbol of the sun,—itself a principal +symbol of the divine nature, and the symbolic +heart of things. The lotus was in some +Eastern countries imagined blossoming upon +the Tree of Life, as the Flower of Life, and +is thus represented in Assyrian bas-reliefs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> +Because the Rose, the flower sacred to the +Virgin Mary, and the flower that Apuleius' +adventurer ate, when he was changed out of +the ass's shape and received into the fellowship +of Isis, is the western Flower of Life, I +have imagined it growing upon the Tree of +Life. I once stood beside a man in Ireland +when he saw it growing there in a vision, that +seemed to have rapt him out of his body. +He saw the garden of Eden walled about, and +on the top of a high mountain, as in certain +mediæval diagrams, and after passing the Tree +of Knowledge, on which grew fruit full of +troubled faces, and through whose branches +flowed, he was told, sap that was human souls, +he came to a tall, dark tree, with little bitter +fruits, and was shown a kind of stair or ladder +going up through the tree, and told to go up; +and near the top of the tree, a beautiful woman, +like the Goddess of Life associated with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> +tree in Assyria, gave him a rose that seemed to +have been growing upon the tree. One finds +the Rose in the Irish poets, sometimes as a +religious symbol, as in the phrase, 'the Rose +of Friday,' meaning the Rose of austerity, in a +Gaelic poem in Dr. Hyde's 'Religious Songs +of Connacht;' and, I think, as a symbol of +woman's beauty in the Gaelic song, 'Roseen +Dubh;' and a symbol of Ireland in Mangan's +adaptation of 'Roseen Dubh,' 'My Dark Rosaleen,' +and in Mr. Aubrey de Vere's 'The +Little Black Rose.' I do not know any evidence +to prove whether this symbol came to +Ireland with mediæval Christianity, or whether +it has come down from Celtic times. I have +read somewhere that a stone engraved with a +Celtic god, who holds what looks like a rose +in one hand, has been found somewhere in +England; but I cannot find the reference, +though I certainly made a note of it. If the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +Rose was really a symbol of Ireland among the +Gaelic poets, and if 'Roseen Dubh' is really a +political poem, as some think, one may feel +pretty certain that the ancient Celts associated +the Rose with Eire, or Fotla, or Banba—goddesses +who gave their names to Ireland—or +with some principal god or goddess, for such +symbols are not suddenly adopted or invented, +but come out of mythology.</p> + +<p>I have made the Seven Lights, the constellation +of the Bear, lament for the theft of the +Rose, and I have made the Dragon, the constellation +Draco, the guardian of the Rose, because +these constellations move about the pole +of the heavens, the ancient Tree of Life in +many countries, and are often associated with +the Tree of Life in mythology. It is this +Tree of Life that I have put into the 'Song +of Mongan' under its common Irish form of +a hazel; and, because it had sometimes the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> +stars for fruit, I have hung upon it 'the +Crooked Plough' and the 'Pilot' star, as +Gaelic-speaking Irishmen sometimes call the +Bear and the North star. I have made it an +axle-tree in 'Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge,' +for this was another ancient way of representing +it.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Host of the Air.</span></h3> + +<p>Some writers distinguish between the Sluagh +Gaoith, the host of the air, and Sluagh Sidhe, +the host of the Sidhe, and describe the host of +the air as of a peculiar malignancy. Dr. Joyce +says, 'of all the different kinds of goblins ... +air demons were most dreaded by the people. +They lived among clouds, and mists, and rocks, +and hated the human race with the utmost +malignity.' A very old Arann charm, which +contains the words 'Send God, by his strength,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> +between us and the host of the Sidhe, between +us and the host of the air,' seems also to distinguish +among them. I am inclined, however, +to think that the distinction came in +with Christianity and its belief about the +prince of the air, for the host of the Sidhe, as I +have already explained, are closely associated +with the wind.</p> + +<p>They are said to steal brides just after their +marriage, and sometimes in a blast of wind. +A man in Galway says, 'At Aughanish there +were two couples came to the shore to be married, +and one of the newly married women was +in the boat with the priest, and they going back +to the island; and a sudden blast of wind came, +and the priest said some blessed words that were +able to save himself, but the girl was swept.'</p> + +<p>This woman was drowned; but more often +the persons who are taken 'get the touch,' as it +is called, and fall into a half dream, and grow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +indifferent to all things, for their true life has +gone out of the world, and is among the hills +and the forts of the Sidhe. A faery doctor has +told me that his wife 'got the touch' at her +marriage because there was one of them wanted +her; and the way he knew for certain was, that +when he took a pitchfork out of the rafters, +and told her it was a broom, she said, 'It is a +broom.' She was, the truth is, in the magical +sleep, to which people have given a new name +lately, that makes the imagination so passive +that it can be moulded by any voice in any +world into any shape. A mere likeness of +some old woman, or even old animal, some one +or some thing the Sidhe have no longer a use +for, is believed to be left instead of the person +who is 'away;' this some one or some thing +can, it is thought, be driven away by threats, +or by violence (though I have heard country +women say that violence is wrong), which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> +perhaps awakes the soul out of the magical +sleep. The story in the poem is founded on +an old Gaelic ballad that was sung and translated +for me by a woman at Ballisodare in +County Sligo; but in the ballad the husband +found the keeners keening his wife when he got +to his house. She was 'swept' at once; but +the Sidhe are said to value those the most +whom they but cast into a half dream, which +may last for years, for they need the help of a +living person in most of the things they do. +There are many stories of people who seem to +die and be buried—though the country people +will tell you it is but some one or some +thing put in their place that dies and is +buried—and yet are brought back afterwards. +These tales are perhaps memories of true awakenings +out of the magical sleep, moulded by +the imagination, under the influence of a mystical +doctrine which it understands too literally,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> +into the shape of some well-known traditional +tale. One does not hear them as one hears +the others, from the persons who are 'away,' or +from their wives or husbands; and one old +man, who had often seen the Sidhe, began one +of them with 'Maybe it is all vanity.'</p> + +<p>Here is a tale that a friend of mine heard in +the Burren hills, and it is a type of all:—</p> + +<p>'There was a girl to be married, and she +didn't like the man, and she cried when the +day was coming, and said she wouldn't go +along with him. And the mother said, "Get +into the bed, then, and I'll say that you're +sick." And so she did. And when the man +came the mother said to him, "You can't get +her, she's sick in the bed." And he looked in +and said, "That's not my wife that's in the +bed, it's some old hag." And the mother +began to cry and to roar. And he went out +and got two hampers of turf, and made a fire,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> +that they thought he was going to burn the +house down. And when the fire was kindled, +"Come out now," says he, "and we'll see who +you are, when I'll put you on the fire." And +when she heard that, she gave one leap, and +was out of the house, and they saw, then, it +was an old hag she was. Well, the man asked +the advice of an old woman, and she bid him +go to a faery-bush that was near, and he might +get some word of her. So he went there at +night, and saw all sorts of grand people, and +they in carriages or riding on horses, and +among them he could see the girl he came to +look for. So he went again to the old woman, +and she said, "If you can get the three bits of +blackthorn out of her hair, you'll get her +again." So that night he went again, and +that time he only got hold of a bit of her hair. +But the old woman told him that was no use, +and that he was put back now, and it might be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> +twelve nights before he'd get her. But on the +fourth night he got the third bit of blackthorn, +and he took her, and she came away with him. +He never told the mother he had got her; but +one day she saw her at a fair, and, says she, +"That's my daughter; I know her by the smile +and by the laugh of her," and she with a shawl +about her head. So the husband said, "You're +right there, and hard I worked to get her." +She spoke often of the grand things she saw +underground, and how she used to have wine +to drink, and to drive out in a carriage with +four horses every night. And she used to be +able to see her husband when he came to look +for her, and she was greatly afraid he'd get a +drop of the wine, for then he would have come +underground and never left it again. And +she was glad herself to come to earth again, +and not to be left there.'</p> + +<p>The old Gaelic literature is full of the ap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>peals +of the Tribes of the goddess Danu to +mortals whom they would bring into their +country; but the song of Midher to the beautiful +Etain, the wife of the king who was +called Echaid the ploughman, is the type +of all.</p> + +<p>'O beautiful woman, come with me to the +marvellous land where one listens to a sweet +music, where one has spring flowers in one's +hair, where the body is like snow from head to +foot, where no one is sad or silent, where teeth +are white and eyebrows are black ... cheeks +red like foxglove in flower.... Ireland is +beautiful, but not so beautiful as the Great +Plain I call you to. The beer of Ireland is +heady, but the beer of the Great Plain is much +more heady. How marvellous is the country I +am speaking of! Youth does not grow old +there. Streams with warm flood flow there; +sometimes mead, sometimes wine. Men are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> +charming and without a blot there, and love is +not forbidden there. O woman, when you +come into my powerful country you will wear a +crown of gold upon your head. I will give you +the flesh of swine, and you will have beer and +milk to drink, O beautiful woman. O beautiful +woman, come with me!'</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">A Cradle Song.</span></h3> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Michael Robartes asks Forgiveness because +of his many Moods.</span></h3> + +<p>I use the wind as a symbol of vague desires +and hopes, not merely because the Sidhe are in +the wind, or because the wind bloweth as it +listeth, but because wind and spirit and vague +desire have been associated everywhere. A +highland scholar tells me that his country +people use the wind in their talk and in their +proverbs as I use it in my poem.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Song of Wandering Aengus.</span></h3> + +<p>The Tribes of the goddess Danu can take all +shapes, and those that are in the waters take +often the shape of fish. A woman of Burren, +in Galway, says, 'There are more of them in +the sea than on the land, and they sometimes +try to come over the side of the boat in the +form of fishes, for they can take their choice +shape.' At other times they are beautiful +women; and another Galway woman says, +'Surely those things are in the sea as well as +on land. My father was out fishing one night +off Tyrone. And something came beside the +boat that had eyes shining like candles. And +then a wave came in, and a storm rose all in a +minute, and whatever was in the wave, the +weight of it had like to sink the boat. And +then they saw that it was a woman in the sea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> +that had the shining eyes. So my father went +to the priest, and he bid him always to take a +drop of holy water and a pinch of salt out in +the boat with him, and nothing could harm +him.'</p> + +<p>The poem was suggested to me by a Greek +folk song; but the folk belief of Greece is very +like that of Ireland, and I certainly thought, +when I wrote it, of Ireland, and of the spirits +that are in Ireland. An old man who was cutting +a quickset hedge near Gort, in Galway, +said, only the other day, 'One time I was cutting +timber over in Inchy, and about eight +o'clock one morning, when I got there, I saw +a girl picking nuts, with her hair hanging down +over her shoulders; brown hair; and she had +a good, clean face, and she was tall, and nothing +on her head, and her dress no way gaudy, +but simple. And when she felt me coming +she gathered herself up, and was gone, as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +the earth had swallowed her up. And I followed +her, and looked for her, but I never +could see her again from that day to this, never +again.'</p> + +<p>The county Galway people use the word +'clean' in its old sense of fresh and comely.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Michael Robartes bids his Beloved be +at Peace.</span></h3> + +<p>November, the old beginning of winter, or +of the victory of the Fomor, or powers of death, +and dismay, and cold, and darkness, is associated +by the Irish people with the horse-shaped +Púcas, who are now mischievous spirits, +but were once Fomorian divinities. I think +that they may have some connection with the +horses of Mannannan, who reigned over the +country of the dead, where the Fomorian +Tethra reigned also; and the horses of Man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>nannan, +though they could cross the land as +easily as the sea, are constantly associated with +the waves. Some neo-platonist, I forget who, +describes the sea as a symbol of the drifting +indefinite bitterness of life, and I believe there +is like symbolism intended in the many Irish +voyages to the islands of enchantment, or that +there was, at any rate, in the mythology out of +which these stories have been shaped. I follow +much Irish and other mythology, and the +magical tradition, in associating the North +with night and sleep, and the East, the place +of sunrise, with hope, and the South, the place +of the sun when at its height, with passion and +desire, and the West, the place of sunset, with +fading and dreaming things.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Mongan laments the Change that has +come upon him and his Beloved.</span></h3> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Hanrahan laments because of his Wanderings.</span></h3> + +<p>My deer and hound are properly related to +the deer and hound that flicker in and out of +the various tellings of the Arthurian legends, +leading different knights upon adventures, and +to the hounds and to the hornless deer at the +beginning of, I think, all tellings of Oisin's +journey to the country of the young. The +hound is certainly related to the Hounds of +Annwvyn or of Hades, who are white, and have +red ears, and were heard, and are, perhaps, still +heard by Welsh peasants following some flying +thing in the night winds; and is probably +related to the hounds that Irish country people +believe will awake and seize the souls of the +dead if you lament them too loudly or too soon,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> +and to the hound the son of Setanta killed, on +what was certainly, in the first form of the tale, +a visit to the Celtic Hades. An old woman +told a friend and myself that she saw what she +thought were white birds, flying over an enchanted +place, but found, when she got near, +that they had dog's heads; and I do not doubt +that my hound and these dog-headed birds are +of the same family. I got my hound and deer +out of a last century Gaelic poem about +Oisin's journey to the country of the young. +After the hunting of the hornless deer, that +leads him to the seashore, and while he is riding +over the sea with Niam, he sees amid the +waters—I have not the Gaelic poem by me, +and describe it from memory—a young man +following a girl who has a golden apple, and +afterwards a hound with one red ear following +a deer with no horns. This hound and this +deer seem plain images of the desire of man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +'which is for the woman,' and 'the desire of +the woman which is for the desire of the +man,' and of all desires that are as these. +I have read them in this way in 'The Wanderings +of Usheen' or Oisin, and have made +my lover sigh because he has seen in their +faces 'the immortal desire of immortals.' A +solar mythologist would perhaps say that the +girl with the golden apple was once the winter, +or night, carrying the sun away, and +the deer without horns, like the boar without +bristles, darkness flying the light. He would +certainly, I think, say that when Cuchullain, +whom Professor Rhys calls a solar hero, +hunted the enchanted deer of Slieve Fuadh, +because the battle fury was still on him, +he was the sun pursuing clouds, or cold, or +darkness. I have understood them in this +sense in 'Hanrahan laments because of his +wandering,' and made Hanrahan long for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> +day when they, fragments of ancestral darkness, +will overthrow the world. The desire of +the woman, the flying darkness, it is all one! +The image—a cross, a man preaching in the +wilderness, a dancing Salome, a lily in a girl's +hand, a flame leaping, a globe with wings, a +pale sunset over still waters—is an eternal act; +but our understandings are temporal and +understand but a little at a time.</p> + +<p>The man in my poem who has a hazel wand +may have been Aengus, Master of Love; and +I have made the boar without bristles come +out of the West, because the place of sunset +was in Ireland, as in other countries, a place +of symbolic darkness and death.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Cap and Bells.</span></h3> + +<p>I dreamed this story exactly as I have written +it, and dreamed another long dream after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> +it, trying to make out its meaning, and whether +I was to write it in prose or verse. The first +dream was more a vision than a dream, for it +was beautiful and coherent, and gave me the +sense of illumination and exaltation that one +gets from visions, while the second dream was +confused and meaningless. The poem has +always meant a great deal to me, though, as is +the way with symbolic poems, it has not always +meant quite the same thing. Blake would have +said 'the authors are in eternity,' and I am +quite sure they can only be questioned in +dreams.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Valley of the Black Pig.</span></h3> + +<p>All over Ireland there are prophecies of the +coming rout of the enemies of Ireland, in a +certain Valley of the Black Pig, and these prophecies +are, no doubt, now, as they were in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +Fenian days, a political force. I have heard +of one man who would not give any money +to the Land League, because the Battle could +not be until the close of the century; but, as +a rule, periods of trouble bring prophecies +of its near coming. A few years before my +time, an old man who lived at Lisadell, in +Sligo, used to fall down in a fit and rave out +descriptions of the Battle; and a man in Sligo +has told me that it will be so great a battle +that the horses shall go up to their fetlocks in +blood, and that their girths, when it is over, +will rot from their bellies for lack of a hand to +unbuckle them. The battle is a mythological +battle, and the black pig is one with the bristleless +boar, that killed Dearmod, in November, +upon the western end of Ben Bulben; +Misroide MacDatha's sow, whose carving +brought on so great a battle; 'the croppy black +sow,' and 'the cutty black sow' of Welsh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> +November rhymes ('Celtic Heathendom,' pages +509-516); the boar that killed Adonis; the +boar that killed Attis; and the pig embodiment +of Typhon ('Golden Bough,' II. pages +26, 31). The pig seems to have been originally +a genius of the corn, and, seemingly because +the too great power of their divinity +makes divine things dangerous to mortals, its +flesh was forbidden to many eastern nations; +but as the meaning of the prohibition was +forgotten, abhorrence took the place of reverence, +pigs and boars grew into types of evil, +and were described as the enemies of the very +gods they once typified ('Golden Bough,' II. +26-31, 56-57). The Pig would, therefore, become +the Black Pig, a type of cold and of winter +that awake in November, the old beginning of +winter, to do battle with the summer, and with +the fruit and leaves, and finally, as I suggest; +and as I believe, for the purposes of poetry;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> +of the darkness that will at last destroy the +gods and the world. The country people say +there is no shape for a spirit to take so dangerous +as the shape of a pig; and a Galway blacksmith—and +blacksmiths are thought to be +especially protected—says he would be afraid +to meet a pig on the road at night; and another +Galway man tells this story: 'There was a man +coming the road from Gort to Garryland one +night, and he had a drop taken; and before +him, on the road, he saw a pig walking; and +having a drop in, he gave a shout, and made a +kick at it, and bid it get out of that. And by +the time he got home, his arm was swelled +from the shoulder to be as big as a bag, and he +couldn't use his hand with the pain of it. And +his wife brought him, after a few days, to a +woman that used to do cures at Rahasane. +And on the road all she could do would hardly +keep him from lying down to sleep on the grass.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> +And when they got to the woman she knew all +that happened; and, says she, it's well for you +that your wife didn't let you fall asleep on the +grass, for if you had done that but even for one +instant, you'd be a lost man.'</p> + +<p>It is possible that bristles were associated +with fertility, as the tail certainly was, for a +pig's tail is stuck into the ground in Courland, +that the corn may grow abundantly, and the +tails of pigs, and other animal embodiments of +the corn genius, are dragged over the ground +to make it fertile in different countries. Professor +Rhys, who considers the bristleless boar +a symbol of darkness and cold, rather than of +winter and cold, thinks it was without bristles +because the darkness is shorn away by the sun. +It may have had different meanings, just as the +scourging of the man-god has had different +though not contradictory meanings in different +epochs of the world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Battle should, I believe, be compared +with three other battles; a battle the Sidhe +are said to fight when a person is being taken +away by them; a battle they are said to fight +in November for the harvest; the great battle +the Tribes of the goddess Danu fought, according +to the Gaelic chroniclers, with the Fomor +at Moy Tura, or the Towery Plain.</p> + +<p>I have heard of the battle over the dying both +in County Galway and in the Isles of Arann, +an old Arann fisherman having told me that it +was fought over two of his children, and that +he found blood in a box he had for keeping fish, +when it was over; and I have written about it, +and given examples elsewhere. A faery doctor, +on the borders of Galway and Clare, explained +it as a battle between the friends and enemies +of the dying, the one party trying to take them, +the other trying to save them from being taken. +It may once, when the land of the Sidhe was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> +the only other world, and when every man who +died was carried thither, have always accompanied +death. I suggest that the battle between +the Tribes of the goddess Danu, the +powers of light, and warmth, and fruitfulness, +and goodness, and the Fomor, the powers of +darkness, and cold, and barrenness, and badness +upon the Towery Plain, was the establishment +of the habitable world, the rout of the +ancestral darkness; that the battle among the +Sidhe for the harvest is the annual battle of +summer and winter; that the battle among the +Sidhe at a man's death is the battle of life and +death; and that the battle of the Black Pig is +the battle between the manifest world and the +ancestral darkness at the end of all things; +and that all these battles are one, the battle +of all things with shadowy decay. Once a +symbolism has possessed the imagination of +large numbers of men, it becomes, as I believe,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +an embodiment of disembodied powers, and +repeats itself in dreams and visions, age after +age.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Secret Rose.</span></h3> + +<p>I find that I have unintentionally changed +the old story of Conchobar's death. He did +not see the crucifixion in a vision, but was told +about it. He had been struck by a ball, made +of the dried brain of a dead enemy, and hurled +out of a sling; and this ball had been left in +his head, and his head had been mended, the +Book of Leinster says, with thread of gold because +his hair was like gold. Keating, a writer +of the time of Elizabeth, says, 'In that state +did he remain seven years, until the Friday on +which Christ was crucified, according to some +historians; and when he saw the unusual +changes of the creation and the eclipse of the +sun and the moon at its full, he asked of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> +Bucrach, a Leinster Druid, who was along with +him, what was it that brought that unusual +change upon the planets of Heaven and Earth. +"Jesus Christ, the son of God," said the Druid, +"who is now being crucified by the Jews." +"That is a pity," said Conchobar; "were I in +his presence I would kill those who were putting +him to death." And with that he brought +out his sword, and rushed at a woody grove +which was convenient to him, and began to +cut and fell it; and what he said was, that if +he were among the Jews that was the usage he +would give them, and from the excessiveness of +his fury which seized upon him, the ball started +out of his head, and some of the brain came +after it, and in that way he died. The wood +of Lanshraigh, in Feara Rois, is the name by +which that shrubby wood is called.'</p> + +<p>I have imagined Cuchullain meeting Fand +'walking among flaming dew.' The story of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +their love is one of the most beautiful of our +old tales. Two birds, bound one to another +with a chain of gold, came to a lake side where +Cuchullain and the host of Uladh was encamped, +and sang so sweetly that all the host fell into a +magic sleep. Presently they took the shape +of two beautiful women, and cast a magical +weakness upon Cuchullain, in which he lay +for a year. At the year's end an Aengus, +who was probably Aengus the master of love, +one of the greatest of the children of the +goddess Danu, came and sat upon his bedside, +and sang how Fand, the wife of Mannannan, +the master of the sea, and of the islands of +the dead, loved him; and that if he would +come into the country of the gods, where +there was wine and gold and silver, Fand, +and Laban her sister, would heal him of his +magical weakness. Cuchullain went to the +country of the gods, and, after being for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> +month the lover of Fand, made her a promise +to meet her at a place called 'the Yew at the +Strand's End,' and came back to the earth. +Emer, his mortal wife, won his love again, +and Mannannan came to 'the Yew at the +Strand's End,' and carried Fand away. When +Cuchullain saw her going, his love for her fell +upon him again, and he went mad, and wandered +among the mountains without food or +drink, until he was at last cured by a Druid +drink of forgetfulness.</p> + +<p>I have founded the man 'who drove the gods +out of their Liss,' or fort, upon something I +have read about Caolte after the battle of +Gabra, when almost all his companions were +killed, driving the gods out of their Liss, +either at Osraighe, now Ossory, or at Eas +Ruaidh, now Asseroe, a waterfall at Ballyshannon, +where Ilbreac, one of the children +of the goddess Danu, had a Liss. I am writ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>ing +away from most of my books, and have not +been able to find the passage; but I certainly +read it somewhere.</p> + +<p>I have founded 'the proud dreaming king' +upon Fergus, the son of Roigh, the legendary +poet of 'the quest of the bull of Cualge,' as he +is in the ancient story of Deirdre, and in +modern poems by Ferguson. He married +Nessa, and Ferguson makes him tell how she +took him 'captive in a single look.'</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'I am but an empty shade,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Far from life and passion laid;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet does sweet remembrance thrill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All my shadowy being still.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Presently, because of his great love, he gave +up his throne to Conchobar, her son by another, +and lived out his days feasting, and fighting, +and hunting. His promise never to refuse a +feast from a certain comrade, and the mischief +that came by his promise, and the vengeance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> +he took afterwards, are a principal theme of the +poets. I have explained my imagination of him +in 'Fergus and the Druid,' and in a little song +in the second act of 'The Countess Kathleen.'</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>I have founded him 'who sold tillage, and +house, and goods,' upon something in 'The +Red Pony,' a folk tale in Mr. Larminie's +'West Irish Folk Tales.' A young man 'saw +a light before him on the high road. When he +came as far, there was an open box on the road, +and a light coming up out of it. He took up +the box. There was a lock of hair in it. +Presently he had to go to become the servant +of a king for his living. There were eleven +boys. When they were going out into the +stable at ten o'clock, each of them took a light +but he. He took no candle at all with him. +Each of them went into his own stable. When +he went into his stable he opened the box.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> +He left it in a hole in the wall. The light was +great. It was twice as much as in the other +stables.' The king hears of it, and makes him +show him the box. The king says, 'You must +go and bring me the woman to whom the +hair belongs.' In the end, the young man, +and not the king, marries the woman.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Wind Among the Reeds, by William Butler Yeats + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS *** + +***** This file should be named 32233-h.htm or 32233-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/2/3/32233/ + +Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wind Among the Reeds + +Author: William Butler Yeats + +Release Date: May 3, 2010 [EBook #32233] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS *** + + + + +Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + + +The Wind Among the Reeds + + + + +_The_ WIND AMONG +THE REEDS + +_By_ + +WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS + +LONDON . ELKIN MATHEWS +VIGO STREET . W . MDCCCCIII + +FOURTH EDITION. + + + + + PAGE + +THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE 1 + +THE EVERLASTING VOICES 3 + +THE MOODS 4 + +AEDH TELLS OF THE ROSE IN HIS HEART 5 + +THE HOST OF THE AIR 7 + +BREASAL THE FISHERMAN 10 + +A CRADLE SONG 11 + +INTO THE TWILIGHT 13 + +THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS 15 + +THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER 17 + +THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY 18 + +THE HEART OF THE WOMAN 20 + +AEDH LAMENTS THE LOSS OF LOVE 21 + +MONGAN LAMENTS THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME + UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED 22 + +MICHAEL ROBARTES BIDS HIS BELOVED BE AT + PEACE 24 + +HANRAHAN REPROVES THE CURLEW 26 + +MICHAEL ROBARTES REMEMBERS FORGOTTEN + BEAUTY 27 + +A POET TO HIS BELOVED 29 + +AEDH GIVES HIS BELOVED CERTAIN RHYMES 30 + +TO MY HEART, BIDDING IT HAVE NO FEAR 31 + +THE CAP AND BELLS 32 + +THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 35 + +MICHAEL ROBARTES ASKS FORGIVENESS BECAUSE + OF HIS MANY MOODS 37 + +AEDH TELLS OF A VALLEY FULL OF LOVERS 40 + +AEDH TELLS OF THE PERFECT BEAUTY 42 + +AEDH HEARS THE CRY OF THE SEDGE 43 + +AEDH THINKS OF THOSE WHO HAVE SPOKEN EVIL + OF HIS BELOVED 44 + +THE BLESSED 45 + +THE SECRET ROSE 47 + +HANRAHAN LAMENTS BECAUSE OF HIS WANDERINGS 51 + +THE TRAVAIL OF PASSION 52 + +THE POET PLEADS WITH HIS FRIEND FOR OLD + FRIENDS 54 + +HANRAHAN SPEAKS TO THE LOVERS OF HIS SONGS + IN COMING DAYS 55 + +AEDH PLEADS WITH THE ELEMENTAL POWERS 57 + +AEDH WISHES HIS BELOVED WERE DEAD 59 + +AEDH WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN 60 + +MONGAN THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS 61 + +NOTES 65 + + + + +THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE + + + The host is riding from Knocknarea + And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare; + Caolte tossing his burning hair + And Niamh calling _Away, come away: + Empty your heart of its mortal dream. + The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, + Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, + Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam, + Our arms are waving, our lips are apart; + And if any gaze on our rushing band, + We come between him and the deed of his hand, + We come between him and the hope of his heart_. + The host is rushing 'twixt night and day, + And where is there hope or deed as fair? + Caolte tossing his burning hair, + And Niamh calling _Away, come away_. + + + + +THE EVERLASTING VOICES + + + O sweet everlasting Voices be still; + Go to the guards of the heavenly fold + And bid them wander obeying your will + Flame under flame, till Time be no more; + Have you not heard that our hearts are old, + That you call in birds, in wind on the hill, + In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore? + O sweet everlasting Voices be still. + + + + +THE MOODS + + + Time drops in decay, + Like a candle burnt out, + And the mountains and woods + Have their day, have their day; + What one in the rout + Of the fire-born moods, + Has fallen away? + + + + +AEDH TELLS OF THE ROSE IN HIS HEART + + + All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, + The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, + The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould, + Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart. + + The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; + I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart, + With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold + For my dreams of your image that blossoms + a rose in the deeps of my heart. + + + + +THE HOST OF THE AIR + + + O'Driscoll drove with a song, + The wild duck and the drake, + From the tall and the tufted reeds + Of the drear Hart Lake. + + And he saw how the reeds grew dark + At the coming of night tide, + And dreamed of the long dim hair + Of Bridget his bride. + + He heard while he sang and dreamed + A piper piping away, + And never was piping so sad, + And never was piping so gay. + + And he saw young men and young girls + Who danced on a level place + And Bridget his bride among them, + With a sad and a gay face. + + The dancers crowded about him, + And many a sweet thing said, + And a young man brought him red wine + And a young girl white bread. + + But Bridget drew him by the sleeve, + Away from the merry bands, + To old men playing at cards + With a twinkling of ancient hands. + + The bread and the wine had a doom, + For these were the host of the air; + He sat and played in a dream + Of her long dim hair. + + He played with the merry old men + And thought not of evil chance, + Until one bore Bridget his bride + Away from the merry dance. + + He bore her away in his arms, + The handsomest young man there, + And his neck and his breast and his arms + Were drowned in her long dim hair. + + O'Driscoll scattered the cards + And out of his dream awoke: + Old men and young men and young girls + Were gone like a drifting smoke; + + But he heard high up in the air + A piper piping away, + And never was piping so sad, + And never was piping so gay. + + + + +BREASAL THE FISHERMAN + + + Although you hide in the ebb and flow + Of the pale tide when the moon has set, + The people of coming days will know + About the casting out of my net, + And how you have leaped times out of mind + Over the little silver cords, + And think that you were hard and unkind, + And blame you with many bitter words. + + + + +A CRADLE SONG + + + The Danann children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold, + And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes, + For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies, + With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold: + I kiss my wailing child and press it to my breast, + And hear the narrow graves calling my child and me. + Desolate winds that cry over the wandering sea; + Desolate winds that hover in the flaming West; + Desolate winds that beat the doors of Heaven, and beat + The doors of Hell and blow there many a whimpering ghost; + O heart the winds have shaken; the unappeasable host + Is comelier than candles before Maurya's feet. + + + + +INTO THE TWILIGHT + + + Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, + Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; + Laugh heart again in the gray twilight, + Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn. + + Your mother Eire is always young, + Dew ever shining and twilight gray; + Though hope fall from you and love decay, + Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue. + + Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill: + For there the mystical brotherhood + Of sun and moon and hollow and wood + And river and stream work out their will; + And God stands winding His lonely horn, + And time and the world are ever in flight; + And love is less kind than the gray twilight, + And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn. + + + + +THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS + + + I went out to the hazel wood, + Because a fire was in my head, + And cut and peeled a hazel wand, + And hooked a berry to a thread; + And when white moths were on the wing, + And moth-like stars were flickering out, + I dropped the berry in a stream + And caught a little silver trout. + + When I had laid it on the floor + I went to blow the fire a-flame, + But something rustled on the floor, + And someone called me by my name: + It had become a glimmering girl + With apple blossom in her hair + Who called me by my name and ran + And faded through the brightening air. + + Though I am old with wandering + Through hollow lands and hilly lands, + I will find out where she has gone, + And kiss her lips and take her hands; + And walk among long dappled grass, + And pluck till time and times are done, + The silver apples of the moon, + The golden apples of the sun. + + + + +THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER + + + I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow + Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; + And then I must scrub and bake and sweep + Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; + And the young lie long and dream in their bed + Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head, + And their day goes over in idleness, + And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress: + While I must work because I am old, + And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold. + + + + +THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY + + + When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, + Folk dance like a wave of the sea; + My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet, + My brother in Moharabuiee. + + I passed my brother and cousin: + They read in their books of prayer; + I read in my book of songs + I bought at the Sligo fair. + + When we come at the end of time, + To Peter sitting in state, + He will smile on the three old spirits, + But call me first through the gate; + + For the good are always the merry, + Save by an evil chance, + And the merry love the fiddle + And the merry love to dance: + + And when the folk there spy me, + They will all come up to me, + With 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!' + And dance like a wave of the sea. + + + + +THE HEART OF THE WOMAN + + + O what to me the little room + That was brimmed up with prayer and rest; + He bade me out into the gloom, + And my breast lies upon his breast. + + O what to me my mother's care, + The house where I was safe and warm; + The shadowy blossom of my hair + Will hide us from the bitter storm. + + O hiding hair and dewy eyes, + I am no more with life and death, + My heart upon his warm heart lies, + My breath is mixed into his breath. + + + + +AEDH LAMENTS THE LOSS OF LOVE + + + Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, + I had a beautiful friend + And dreamed that the old despair + Would end in love in the end: + She looked in my heart one day + And saw your image was there; + She has gone weeping away. + + + + +MONGAN LAMENTS THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED + + + Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns! + I have been changed to a hound with one red ear; + I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns, + For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire and fear + Under my feet that they follow you night and day. + A man with a hazel wand came without sound; + He changed me suddenly; I was looking another way; + And now my calling is but the calling of a hound; + And Time and Birth and Change are hurrying by. + I would that the boar without bristles had come from the West + And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky + And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest. + + + + +MICHAEL ROBARTES BIDS HIS BELOVED BE AT PEACE + + + I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake, + Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white; + The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night, + The East her hidden joy before the morning break, + The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away, + The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire: + O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire, + The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay: + Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat + Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast, + Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest, + And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet. + + + + +HANRAHAN REPROVES THE CURLEW + + + O, curlew, cry no more in the air, + Or only to the waters in the West; + Because your crying brings to my mind + Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair + That was shaken out over my breast: + There is enough evil in the crying of wind. + + + + +MICHAEL ROBARTES REMEMBERS FORGOTTEN BEAUTY + + + When my arms wrap you round I press + My heart upon the loveliness + That has long faded from the world; + The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled + In shadowy pools, when armies fled; + The love-tales wove with silken thread + By dreaming ladies upon cloth + That has made fat the murderous moth; + The roses that of old time were + Woven by ladies in their hair, + The dew-cold lilies ladies bore + Through many a sacred corridor + Where such gray clouds of incense rose + That only the gods' eyes did not close: + For that pale breast and lingering hand + Come from a more dream-heavy land, + A more dream-heavy hour than this; + And when you sigh from kiss to kiss + I hear white Beauty sighing, too, + For hours when all must fade like dew + But flame on flame, deep under deep, + Throne over throne, where in half sleep + Their swords upon their iron knees + Brood her high lonely mysteries. + + + + +A POET TO HIS BELOVED + + + I bring you with reverent hands + The books of my numberless dreams; + White woman that passion has worn + As the tide wears the dove-gray sands, + And with heart more old than the horn + That is brimmed from the pale fire of time: + White woman with numberless dreams + I bring you my passionate rhyme. + + + + +AEDH GIVES HIS BELOVED CERTAIN RHYMES + + + Fasten your hair with a golden pin, + And bind up every wandering tress; + I bade my heart build these poor rhymes: + It worked at them, day out, day in, + Building a sorrowful loveliness + Out of the battles of old times. + + You need but lift a pearl-pale hand, + And bind up your long hair and sigh; + And all men's hearts must burn and beat; + And candle-like foam on the dim sand, + And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky, + Live but to light your passing feet. + + + + +TO MY HEART, BIDDING IT HAVE NO FEAR + + + Be you still, be you still, trembling heart; + Remember the wisdom out of the old days: + _Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, + And the winds that blow through the starry ways, + Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood + Cover over and hide, for he has no part + With the proud, majestical multitude._ + + + + +THE CAP AND BELLS + + + The jester walked in the garden: + The garden had fallen still; + He bade his soul rise upward + And stand on her window-sill. + + It rose in a straight blue garment, + When owls began to call: + It had grown wise-tongued by thinking + Of a quiet and light footfall; + + But the young queen would not listen; + She rose in her pale night gown; + She drew in the heavy casement + And pushed the latches down. + + He bade his heart go to her, + When the owls called out no more; + In a red and quivering garment + It sang to her through the door. + + It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming, + Of a flutter of flower-like hair; + But she took up her fan from the table + And waved it off on the air. + + 'I have cap and bells,' he pondered, + 'I will send them to her and die;' + And when the morning whitened + He left them where she went by. + + She laid them upon her bosom, + Under a cloud of her hair, + And her red lips sang them a love song: + Till stars grew out of the air. + + She opened her door and her window, + And the heart and the soul came through, + To her right hand came the red one, + To her left hand came the blue. + + They set up a noise like crickets, + A chattering wise and sweet, + And her hair was a folded flower + And the quiet of love in her feet. + + + + +THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG + + + The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears + Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes, + And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries + Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears. + We who still labour by the cromlec on the shore, + The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew, + Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you + Master of the still stars and of the flaming door. + + + + +MICHAEL ROBARTES ASKS FORGIVENESS BECAUSE OF HIS MANY MOODS + + + If this importunate heart trouble your peace + With words lighter than air, + Or hopes that in mere hoping flicker and cease; + Crumple the rose in your hair; + And cover your lips with odorous twilight and say, + 'O Hearts of wind-blown flame! + 'O Winds, elder than changing of night and day, + 'That murmuring and longing came, + 'From marble cities loud with tabors of old + 'In dove-gray faery lands; + 'From battle banners fold upon purple fold, + 'Queens wrought with glimmering hands; + 'That saw young Niamh hover with love-lorn face + 'Above the wandering tide; + 'And lingered in the hidden desolate place, + 'Where the last Phoenix died + 'And wrapped the flames above his holy head; + 'And still murmur and long: + 'O Piteous Hearts, changing till change be dead + 'In a tumultuous song:' + And cover the pale blossoms of your breast + With your dim heavy hair, + And trouble with a sigh for all things longing for rest + The odorous twilight there. + + + + +AEDH TELLS OF A VALLEY FULL OF LOVERS + + + I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs, + For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood; + And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood + With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes: + I cried in my dream '_O women bid the young men lay + 'Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair, + 'Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair + 'Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away._' + + + + +AEDH TELLS OF THE PERFECT BEAUTY + + + O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes + The poets labouring all their days + To build a perfect beauty in rhyme + Are overthrown by a woman's gaze + And by the unlabouring brood of the skies: + And therefore my heart will bow, when dew + Is dropping sleep, until God burn time, + Before the unlabouring stars and you. + + + + +AEDH HEARS THE CRY OF THE SEDGE + + + I wander by the edge + Of this desolate lake + Where wind cries in the sedge + _Until the axle break + That keeps the stars in their round + And hands hurl in the deep + The banners of East and West + And the girdle of light is unbound, + Your breast will not lie by the breast + Of your beloved in sleep_. + + + + +AEDH THINKS OF THOSE WHO HAVE SPOKEN EVIL OF HIS BELOVED + + + Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair, + And dream about the great and their pride; + They have spoken against you everywhere, + But weigh this song with the great and their pride; + I made it out of a mouthful of air, + Their children's children shall say they have lied. + + + + +THE BLESSED + + + Cumhal called out, bending his head, + Till Dathi came and stood, + With a blink in his eyes at the cave mouth, + Between the wind and the wood. + + And Cumhal said, bending his knees, + 'I have come by the windy way + 'To gather the half of your blessedness + 'And learn to pray when you pray. + + 'I can bring you salmon out of the streams + 'And heron out of the skies.' + But Dathi folded his hands and smiled + With the secrets of God in his eyes. + + And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke + All manner of blessed souls, + Women and children, young men with books, + And old men with croziers and stoles. + + 'Praise God and God's mother,' Dathi said, + 'For God and God's mother have sent + 'The blessedest souls that walk in the world + 'To fill your heart with content.' + + 'And which is the blessedest,' Cumhal said, + 'Where all are comely and good? + 'Is it these that with golden thuribles + 'Are singing about the wood?' + + 'My eyes are blinking,' Dathi said, + 'With the secrets of God half blind, + 'But I can see where the wind goes + 'And follow the way of the wind; + + 'And blessedness goes where the wind goes, + 'And when it is gone we are dead; + 'I see the blessedest soul in the world + 'And he nods a drunken head. + + 'O blessedness comes in the night and the day + 'And whither the wise heart knows; + 'And one has seen in the redness of wine + 'The Incorruptible Rose, + + 'That drowsily drops faint leaves on him + 'And the sweetness of desire, + 'While time and the world are ebbing away + 'In twilights of dew and of fire.' + + + + +THE SECRET ROSE + + + Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, + Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those + Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, + Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir + And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep + Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep + Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold + The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold + Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes + Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise + In druid vapour and make the torches dim; + Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him + Who met Fand walking among flaming dew + By a gray shore where the wind never blew, + And lost the world and Emer for a kiss; + And him who drove the gods out of their liss, + And till a hundred morns had flowered red, + Feasted and wept the barrows of his dead; + And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown + And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown + Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods; + And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods, + And sought through lands and islands numberless years, + Until he found with laughter and with tears, + A woman, of so shining loveliness, + That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress, + A little stolen tress. I, too, await + The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. + When shall the stars be blown about the sky, + Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die? + Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows, + Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose? + + + + +HANRAHAN LAMENTS BECAUSE OF HIS WANDERINGS + + + O where is our Mother of Peace + Nodding her purple hood? + For the winds that awakened the stars + Are blowing through my blood. + I would that the death-pale deer + Had come through the mountain side, + And trampled the mountain away, + And drunk up the murmuring tide; + For the winds that awakened the stars + Are blowing through my blood, + And our Mother of Peace has forgot me + Under her purple hood. + + + + +THE TRAVAIL OF PASSION + + + When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide; + When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay; + Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way + Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side, + The hyssop-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kidron stream: + We will bend down and loosen our hair over you, + That it may drop faint perfume, and be heavy with dew, + Lilies of death-pale hope, roses of passionate dream. + + + + +THE POET PLEADS WITH HIS FRIEND FOR OLD FRIENDS + + + Though you are in your shining days, + Voices among the crowd + And new friends busy with your praise, + Be not unkind or proud, + But think about old friends the most: + Time's bitter flood will rise, + Your beauty perish and be lost + For all eyes but these eyes. + + + + +HANRAHAN SPEAKS TO THE LOVERS OF HIS SONGS IN COMING DAYS + + + O, colleens, kneeling by your altar rails long hence, + When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer, + And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air + And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense; + Bend down and pray for the great sin I wove in song, + Till Maurya of the wounded heart cry a sweet cry, + And call to my beloved and me: 'No longer fly + 'Amid the hovering, piteous, penitential throng.' + + + + +AEDH PLEADS WITH THE ELEMENTAL POWERS + + + The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows + Have pulled the Immortal Rose; + And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept, + The Polar Dragon slept, + His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep: + When will he wake from sleep? + + Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire, + With your harmonious choir + Encircle her I love and sing her into peace, + That my old care may cease; + Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight + The nets of day and night. + + Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be + Like the pale cup of the sea, + When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim + Above its cloudy rim; + But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow + Whither her footsteps go. + + + + +AEDH WISHES HIS BELOVED WERE DEAD + + + Were you but lying cold and dead, + And lights were paling out of the West, + You would come hither, and bend your head, + And I would lay my head on your breast; + And you would murmur tender words, + Forgiving me, because you were dead: + Nor would you rise and hasten away, + Though you have the will of the wild birds, + But know your hair was bound and wound + About the stars and moon and sun: + O would beloved that you lay + Under the dock-leaves in the ground, + While lights were paling one by one. + + + + +AEDH WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN + + + Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, + Enwrought with golden and silver light, + The blue and the dim and the dark cloths + Of night and light and the half light, + I would spread the cloths under your feet: + But I, being poor, have only my dreams; + I have spread my dreams under your feet; + Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. + + + + +MONGAN THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS + + + I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young + And weep because I know all things now: + I have been a hazel tree and they hung + The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough + Among my leaves in times out of mind: + I became a rush that horses tread: + I became a man, a hater of the wind, + Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head + Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair + Of the woman that he loves, until he dies; + Although the rushes and the fowl of the air + Cry of his love with their pitiful cries. + + + + +NOTES + + +THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE. + +The powerful and wealthy called the gods of ancient Ireland the Tuatha +De Danaan, or the Tribes of the goddess Danu, but the poor called them, +and still sometimes call them, the Sidhe, from Aes Sidhe or Sluagh +Sidhe, the people of the Faery Hills, as these words are usually +explained. Sidhe is also Gaelic for wind, and certainly the Sidhe have +much to do with the wind. They journey in whirling winds, the winds that +were called the dance of the daughters of Herodias in the Middle Ages, +Herodias doubtless taking the place of some old goddess. When the +country people see the leaves whirling on the road they bless +themselves, because they believe the Sidhe to be passing by. They are +almost always said to wear no covering upon their heads, and to let +their hair stream out; and the great among them, for they have great and +simple, go much upon horseback. If any one becomes too much interested +in them, and sees them over much, he loses all interest in ordinary +things. I shall write a great deal elsewhere about such enchanted +persons, and can give but an example or two now. + +A woman near Gort, in Galway, says: 'There is a boy, now, of the +Cloran's; but I wouldn't for the world let them think I spoke of him; +it's two years since he came from America, and since that time he never +went to Mass, or to church, or to fairs, or to market, or to stand on +the cross roads, or to hurling, or to nothing. And if any one comes into +the house, it's into the room he'll slip, not to see them; and as to +work, he has the garden dug to bits, and the whole place smeared with +cow dung; and such a crop as was never seen; and the alders all plaited +till they look grand. One day he went as far as the chapel; but as soon +as he got to the door he turned straight round again, as if he hadn't +power to pass it. I wonder he wouldn't get the priest to read a Mass for +him, or something; but the crop he has is grand, and you may know well +he has some to help him.' One hears many stories of the kind; and a man +whose son is believed to go out riding among them at night tells me that +he is careless about everything, and lies in bed until it is late in the +day. A doctor believes this boy to be mad. Those that are at times +'away,' as it is called, know all things, but are afraid to speak. A +countryman at Kiltartan says, 'There was one of the Lydons--John--was +away for seven years, lying in his bed, but brought away at nights, and +he knew everything; and one, Kearney, up in the mountains, a cousin of +his own, lost two hoggets, and came and told him, and he knew the very +spot where they were, and told him, and he got them back again. But +_they_ were vexed at that, and took away the power, so that he never +knew anything again, no more than another.' This wisdom is the wisdom of +the fools of the Celtic stories, that was above all the wisdom of the +wise. Lomna, the fool of Fiann, had so great wisdom that his head, cut +from his body, was still able to sing and prophesy; and a writer in the +'Encyclopaedia Britannica' writes that Tristram, in the oldest form of +the tale of Tristram and Iseult, drank wisdom, and madness the shadow of +wisdom, and not love, out of the magic cup. + +The great of the old times are among the Tribes of Danu, and are kings +and queens among them. Caolte was a companion of Fiann; and years after +his death he appeared to a king in a forest, and was a flaming man, that +he might lead him in the darkness. When the king asked him who he was, +he said, 'I am your candlestick.' I do not remember where I have read +this story, and I have, maybe, half forgotten it. Niam was a beautiful +woman of the Tribes of Danu, that led Oisin to the Country of the Young, +as their country is called; I have written about her in 'The Wandering +of Usheen;' and he came back, at last, to bitterness and weariness. + +Knocknarea is in Sligo, and the country people say that Maeve, still a +great queen of the western Sidhe, is buried in the cairn of stones upon +it. I have written of Clooth-na-Bare in 'The Celtic Twilight.' She 'went +all over the world, seeking a lake deep enough to drown her faery life, +of which she had grown weary, leaping from hill to hill, and setting up +a cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted, until, at last, she found +the deepest water in the world in little Lough Ia, on the top of the +bird mountain, in Sligo.' I forget, now, where I heard this story, but +it may have been from a priest at Collooney. Clooth-na-Bare would mean +the old woman of Bare, but is evidently a corruption of Cailleac Bare, +the old woman Bare, who, under the names Bare, and Berah, and Beri, and +Verah, and Dera, and Dhira, appears in the legends of many places. Mr. +O'Grady found her haunting Lough Liath high up on the top of a mountain +of the Fews, the Slieve Fuadh, or Slieve G-Cullain of old times, under +the name of the Cailleac Buillia. He describes Lough Liath as a desolate +moon-shaped lake, with made wells and sunken passages upon its borders, +and beset by marsh and heather and gray boulders, and closes his +'Flight of the Eagle' with a long rhapsody upon mountain and lake, +because of the heroic tales and beautiful old myths that have hung about +them always. He identifies the Cailleac Buillia with that Meluchra who +persuaded Fionn to go to her amid the waters of Lough Liath, and so +changed him with her enchantments, that, though she had to free him +because of the threats of the Fiana, his hair was ever afterwards as +white as snow. To this day the Tribes of the Goddess Danu that are in +the waters beckon to men, and drown them in the waters; and Bare, or +Dhira, or Meluchra, or whatever name one likes the best, is, doubtless, +the name of a mistress among them. Meluchra was daughter of Cullain; and +Cullain Mr. O'Grady calls, upon I know not what authority, a form of +Lir, the master of waters. The people of the waters have been in all +ages beautiful and changeable and lascivious, or beautiful and wise and +lonely, for water is everywhere the signature of the fruitfulness of the +body and of the fruitfulness of dreams. The white hair of Fionn may be +but another of the troubles of those that come to unearthly wisdom and +earthly trouble, and the threats and violence of the Fiana against her, +a different form of the threats and violence the country people use, to +make the Tribes of Danu give up those that are 'away.' Bare is now often +called an ugly old woman; but Dr. Joyce says that one of her old names +was Aebhin, which means beautiful. Aebhen was the goddess of the tribes +of northern Leinster; and the lover she had made immortal, and who loved +her perfectly, left her, and put on mortality, to fight among them +against the stranger, and died on the strand of Clontarf. + + +'AEDH,' 'HANRAHAN' AND 'MICHAEL ROBARTES' IN THESE POEMS. + +These are personages in 'The Secret Rose;' but, with the exception of +some of Hanrahan's and one of Aedh's poems, the poems are not out of +that book. I have used them in this book more as principles of the mind +than as actual personages. It is probable that only students of the +magical tradition will understand me when I say that 'Michael Robartes' +is fire reflected in water, and that Hanrahan is fire blown by the wind, +and that Aedh, whose name is not merely the Irish form of Hugh, but the +Irish for fire, is fire burning by itself. To put it in a different way, +Hanrahan is the simplicity of an imagination too changeable to gather +permanent possessions, or the adoration of the shepherds; and Michael +Robartes is the pride of the imagination brooding upon the greatness of +its possessions, or the adoration of the Magi; while Aedh is the myrrh +and frankincense that the imagination offers continually before all that +it loves. + + +AEDH PLEADS WITH THE ELEMENTAL POWERS. + +MONGAN THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS. + +AEDH HEARS THE CRY OF THE SEDGE. + +The Rose has been for many centuries a symbol of spiritual love and +supreme beauty. The Count Goblet D'Alviella thinks that it was once a +symbol of the sun,--itself a principal symbol of the divine nature, and +the symbolic heart of things. The lotus was in some Eastern countries +imagined blossoming upon the Tree of Life, as the Flower of Life, and is +thus represented in Assyrian bas-reliefs. Because the Rose, the flower +sacred to the Virgin Mary, and the flower that Apuleius' adventurer ate, +when he was changed out of the ass's shape and received into the +fellowship of Isis, is the western Flower of Life, I have imagined it +growing upon the Tree of Life. I once stood beside a man in Ireland when +he saw it growing there in a vision, that seemed to have rapt him out of +his body. He saw the garden of Eden walled about, and on the top of a +high mountain, as in certain mediaeval diagrams, and after passing the +Tree of Knowledge, on which grew fruit full of troubled faces, and +through whose branches flowed, he was told, sap that was human souls, he +came to a tall, dark tree, with little bitter fruits, and was shown a +kind of stair or ladder going up through the tree, and told to go up; +and near the top of the tree, a beautiful woman, like the Goddess of +Life associated with the tree in Assyria, gave him a rose that seemed +to have been growing upon the tree. One finds the Rose in the Irish +poets, sometimes as a religious symbol, as in the phrase, 'the Rose of +Friday,' meaning the Rose of austerity, in a Gaelic poem in Dr. Hyde's +'Religious Songs of Connacht;' and, I think, as a symbol of woman's +beauty in the Gaelic song, 'Roseen Dubh;' and a symbol of Ireland in +Mangan's adaptation of 'Roseen Dubh,' 'My Dark Rosaleen,' and in Mr. +Aubrey de Vere's 'The Little Black Rose.' I do not know any evidence to +prove whether this symbol came to Ireland with mediaeval Christianity, or +whether it has come down from Celtic times. I have read somewhere that a +stone engraved with a Celtic god, who holds what looks like a rose in +one hand, has been found somewhere in England; but I cannot find the +reference, though I certainly made a note of it. If the Rose was really +a symbol of Ireland among the Gaelic poets, and if 'Roseen Dubh' is +really a political poem, as some think, one may feel pretty certain that +the ancient Celts associated the Rose with Eire, or Fotla, or +Banba--goddesses who gave their names to Ireland--or with some principal +god or goddess, for such symbols are not suddenly adopted or invented, +but come out of mythology. + +I have made the Seven Lights, the constellation of the Bear, lament for +the theft of the Rose, and I have made the Dragon, the constellation +Draco, the guardian of the Rose, because these constellations move about +the pole of the heavens, the ancient Tree of Life in many countries, and +are often associated with the Tree of Life in mythology. It is this Tree +of Life that I have put into the 'Song of Mongan' under its common Irish +form of a hazel; and, because it had sometimes the stars for fruit, I +have hung upon it 'the Crooked Plough' and the 'Pilot' star, as +Gaelic-speaking Irishmen sometimes call the Bear and the North star. I +have made it an axle-tree in 'Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge,' for this +was another ancient way of representing it. + + +THE HOST OF THE AIR. + +Some writers distinguish between the Sluagh Gaoith, the host of the air, +and Sluagh Sidhe, the host of the Sidhe, and describe the host of the +air as of a peculiar malignancy. Dr. Joyce says, 'of all the different +kinds of goblins ... air demons were most dreaded by the people. They +lived among clouds, and mists, and rocks, and hated the human race with +the utmost malignity.' A very old Arann charm, which contains the words +'Send God, by his strength, between us and the host of the Sidhe, +between us and the host of the air,' seems also to distinguish among +them. I am inclined, however, to think that the distinction came in with +Christianity and its belief about the prince of the air, for the host of +the Sidhe, as I have already explained, are closely associated with the +wind. + +They are said to steal brides just after their marriage, and sometimes +in a blast of wind. A man in Galway says, 'At Aughanish there were two +couples came to the shore to be married, and one of the newly married +women was in the boat with the priest, and they going back to the +island; and a sudden blast of wind came, and the priest said some +blessed words that were able to save himself, but the girl was swept.' + +This woman was drowned; but more often the persons who are taken 'get +the touch,' as it is called, and fall into a half dream, and grow +indifferent to all things, for their true life has gone out of the +world, and is among the hills and the forts of the Sidhe. A faery doctor +has told me that his wife 'got the touch' at her marriage because there +was one of them wanted her; and the way he knew for certain was, that +when he took a pitchfork out of the rafters, and told her it was a +broom, she said, 'It is a broom.' She was, the truth is, in the magical +sleep, to which people have given a new name lately, that makes the +imagination so passive that it can be moulded by any voice in any world +into any shape. A mere likeness of some old woman, or even old animal, +some one or some thing the Sidhe have no longer a use for, is believed +to be left instead of the person who is 'away;' this some one or some +thing can, it is thought, be driven away by threats, or by violence +(though I have heard country women say that violence is wrong), which +perhaps awakes the soul out of the magical sleep. The story in the poem +is founded on an old Gaelic ballad that was sung and translated for me +by a woman at Ballisodare in County Sligo; but in the ballad the husband +found the keeners keening his wife when he got to his house. She was +'swept' at once; but the Sidhe are said to value those the most whom +they but cast into a half dream, which may last for years, for they need +the help of a living person in most of the things they do. There are +many stories of people who seem to die and be buried--though the country +people will tell you it is but some one or some thing put in their place +that dies and is buried--and yet are brought back afterwards. These +tales are perhaps memories of true awakenings out of the magical sleep, +moulded by the imagination, under the influence of a mystical doctrine +which it understands too literally, into the shape of some well-known +traditional tale. One does not hear them as one hears the others, from +the persons who are 'away,' or from their wives or husbands; and one old +man, who had often seen the Sidhe, began one of them with 'Maybe it is +all vanity.' + +Here is a tale that a friend of mine heard in the Burren hills, and it +is a type of all:-- + +'There was a girl to be married, and she didn't like the man, and she +cried when the day was coming, and said she wouldn't go along with him. +And the mother said, "Get into the bed, then, and I'll say that you're +sick." And so she did. And when the man came the mother said to him, +"You can't get her, she's sick in the bed." And he looked in and said, +"That's not my wife that's in the bed, it's some old hag." And the +mother began to cry and to roar. And he went out and got two hampers of +turf, and made a fire, that they thought he was going to burn the house +down. And when the fire was kindled, "Come out now," says he, "and we'll +see who you are, when I'll put you on the fire." And when she heard +that, she gave one leap, and was out of the house, and they saw, then, +it was an old hag she was. Well, the man asked the advice of an old +woman, and she bid him go to a faery-bush that was near, and he might +get some word of her. So he went there at night, and saw all sorts of +grand people, and they in carriages or riding on horses, and among them +he could see the girl he came to look for. So he went again to the old +woman, and she said, "If you can get the three bits of blackthorn out of +her hair, you'll get her again." So that night he went again, and that +time he only got hold of a bit of her hair. But the old woman told him +that was no use, and that he was put back now, and it might be twelve +nights before he'd get her. But on the fourth night he got the third bit +of blackthorn, and he took her, and she came away with him. He never +told the mother he had got her; but one day she saw her at a fair, and, +says she, "That's my daughter; I know her by the smile and by the laugh +of her," and she with a shawl about her head. So the husband said, +"You're right there, and hard I worked to get her." She spoke often of +the grand things she saw underground, and how she used to have wine to +drink, and to drive out in a carriage with four horses every night. And +she used to be able to see her husband when he came to look for her, and +she was greatly afraid he'd get a drop of the wine, for then he would +have come underground and never left it again. And she was glad herself +to come to earth again, and not to be left there.' + +The old Gaelic literature is full of the appeals of the Tribes of the +goddess Danu to mortals whom they would bring into their country; but +the song of Midher to the beautiful Etain, the wife of the king who was +called Echaid the ploughman, is the type of all. + +'O beautiful woman, come with me to the marvellous land where one +listens to a sweet music, where one has spring flowers in one's hair, +where the body is like snow from head to foot, where no one is sad or +silent, where teeth are white and eyebrows are black ... cheeks red like +foxglove in flower.... Ireland is beautiful, but not so beautiful as the +Great Plain I call you to. The beer of Ireland is heady, but the beer of +the Great Plain is much more heady. How marvellous is the country I am +speaking of! Youth does not grow old there. Streams with warm flood flow +there; sometimes mead, sometimes wine. Men are charming and without a +blot there, and love is not forbidden there. O woman, when you come into +my powerful country you will wear a crown of gold upon your head. I will +give you the flesh of swine, and you will have beer and milk to drink, O +beautiful woman. O beautiful woman, come with me!' + + +A CRADLE SONG. + +MICHAEL ROBARTES ASKS FORGIVENESS BECAUSE OF HIS MANY MOODS. + +I use the wind as a symbol of vague desires and hopes, not merely +because the Sidhe are in the wind, or because the wind bloweth as it +listeth, but because wind and spirit and vague desire have been +associated everywhere. A highland scholar tells me that his country +people use the wind in their talk and in their proverbs as I use it in +my poem. + + +THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS. + +The Tribes of the goddess Danu can take all shapes, and those that are +in the waters take often the shape of fish. A woman of Burren, in +Galway, says, 'There are more of them in the sea than on the land, and +they sometimes try to come over the side of the boat in the form of +fishes, for they can take their choice shape.' At other times they are +beautiful women; and another Galway woman says, 'Surely those things are +in the sea as well as on land. My father was out fishing one night off +Tyrone. And something came beside the boat that had eyes shining like +candles. And then a wave came in, and a storm rose all in a minute, and +whatever was in the wave, the weight of it had like to sink the boat. +And then they saw that it was a woman in the sea that had the shining +eyes. So my father went to the priest, and he bid him always to take a +drop of holy water and a pinch of salt out in the boat with him, and +nothing could harm him.' + +The poem was suggested to me by a Greek folk song; but the folk belief +of Greece is very like that of Ireland, and I certainly thought, when I +wrote it, of Ireland, and of the spirits that are in Ireland. An old man +who was cutting a quickset hedge near Gort, in Galway, said, only the +other day, 'One time I was cutting timber over in Inchy, and about eight +o'clock one morning, when I got there, I saw a girl picking nuts, with +her hair hanging down over her shoulders; brown hair; and she had a +good, clean face, and she was tall, and nothing on her head, and her +dress no way gaudy, but simple. And when she felt me coming she gathered +herself up, and was gone, as if the earth had swallowed her up. And I +followed her, and looked for her, but I never could see her again from +that day to this, never again.' + +The county Galway people use the word 'clean' in its old sense of fresh +and comely. + + +MICHAEL ROBARTES BIDS HIS BELOVED BE AT PEACE. + +November, the old beginning of winter, or of the victory of the Fomor, +or powers of death, and dismay, and cold, and darkness, is associated by +the Irish people with the horse-shaped Pucas, who are now mischievous +spirits, but were once Fomorian divinities. I think that they may have +some connection with the horses of Mannannan, who reigned over the +country of the dead, where the Fomorian Tethra reigned also; and the +horses of Mannannan, though they could cross the land as easily as the +sea, are constantly associated with the waves. Some neo-platonist, I +forget who, describes the sea as a symbol of the drifting indefinite +bitterness of life, and I believe there is like symbolism intended in +the many Irish voyages to the islands of enchantment, or that there was, +at any rate, in the mythology out of which these stories have been +shaped. I follow much Irish and other mythology, and the magical +tradition, in associating the North with night and sleep, and the East, +the place of sunrise, with hope, and the South, the place of the sun +when at its height, with passion and desire, and the West, the place of +sunset, with fading and dreaming things. + + +MONGAN LAMENTS THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED. + +HANRAHAN LAMENTS BECAUSE OF HIS WANDERINGS. + +My deer and hound are properly related to the deer and hound that +flicker in and out of the various tellings of the Arthurian legends, +leading different knights upon adventures, and to the hounds and to the +hornless deer at the beginning of, I think, all tellings of Oisin's +journey to the country of the young. The hound is certainly related to +the Hounds of Annwvyn or of Hades, who are white, and have red ears, and +were heard, and are, perhaps, still heard by Welsh peasants following +some flying thing in the night winds; and is probably related to the +hounds that Irish country people believe will awake and seize the souls +of the dead if you lament them too loudly or too soon, and to the hound +the son of Setanta killed, on what was certainly, in the first form of +the tale, a visit to the Celtic Hades. An old woman told a friend and +myself that she saw what she thought were white birds, flying over an +enchanted place, but found, when she got near, that they had dog's +heads; and I do not doubt that my hound and these dog-headed birds are +of the same family. I got my hound and deer out of a last century Gaelic +poem about Oisin's journey to the country of the young. After the +hunting of the hornless deer, that leads him to the seashore, and while +he is riding over the sea with Niam, he sees amid the waters--I have not +the Gaelic poem by me, and describe it from memory--a young man +following a girl who has a golden apple, and afterwards a hound with one +red ear following a deer with no horns. This hound and this deer seem +plain images of the desire of man 'which is for the woman,' and 'the +desire of the woman which is for the desire of the man,' and of all +desires that are as these. I have read them in this way in 'The +Wanderings of Usheen' or Oisin, and have made my lover sigh because he +has seen in their faces 'the immortal desire of immortals.' A solar +mythologist would perhaps say that the girl with the golden apple was +once the winter, or night, carrying the sun away, and the deer without +horns, like the boar without bristles, darkness flying the light. He +would certainly, I think, say that when Cuchullain, whom Professor Rhys +calls a solar hero, hunted the enchanted deer of Slieve Fuadh, because +the battle fury was still on him, he was the sun pursuing clouds, or +cold, or darkness. I have understood them in this sense in 'Hanrahan +laments because of his wandering,' and made Hanrahan long for the day +when they, fragments of ancestral darkness, will overthrow the world. +The desire of the woman, the flying darkness, it is all one! The +image--a cross, a man preaching in the wilderness, a dancing Salome, a +lily in a girl's hand, a flame leaping, a globe with wings, a pale +sunset over still waters--is an eternal act; but our understandings are +temporal and understand but a little at a time. + +The man in my poem who has a hazel wand may have been Aengus, Master of +Love; and I have made the boar without bristles come out of the West, +because the place of sunset was in Ireland, as in other countries, a +place of symbolic darkness and death. + + +THE CAP AND BELLS. + +I dreamed this story exactly as I have written it, and dreamed another +long dream after it, trying to make out its meaning, and whether I was +to write it in prose or verse. The first dream was more a vision than a +dream, for it was beautiful and coherent, and gave me the sense of +illumination and exaltation that one gets from visions, while the second +dream was confused and meaningless. The poem has always meant a great +deal to me, though, as is the way with symbolic poems, it has not always +meant quite the same thing. Blake would have said 'the authors are in +eternity,' and I am quite sure they can only be questioned in dreams. + + +THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG. + +All over Ireland there are prophecies of the coming rout of the enemies +of Ireland, in a certain Valley of the Black Pig, and these prophecies +are, no doubt, now, as they were in the Fenian days, a political force. +I have heard of one man who would not give any money to the Land League, +because the Battle could not be until the close of the century; but, as +a rule, periods of trouble bring prophecies of its near coming. A few +years before my time, an old man who lived at Lisadell, in Sligo, used +to fall down in a fit and rave out descriptions of the Battle; and a man +in Sligo has told me that it will be so great a battle that the horses +shall go up to their fetlocks in blood, and that their girths, when it +is over, will rot from their bellies for lack of a hand to unbuckle +them. The battle is a mythological battle, and the black pig is one with +the bristleless boar, that killed Dearmod, in November, upon the western +end of Ben Bulben; Misroide MacDatha's sow, whose carving brought on so +great a battle; 'the croppy black sow,' and 'the cutty black sow' of +Welsh November rhymes ('Celtic Heathendom,' pages 509-516); the boar +that killed Adonis; the boar that killed Attis; and the pig embodiment +of Typhon ('Golden Bough,' II. pages 26, 31). The pig seems to have been +originally a genius of the corn, and, seemingly because the too great +power of their divinity makes divine things dangerous to mortals, its +flesh was forbidden to many eastern nations; but as the meaning of the +prohibition was forgotten, abhorrence took the place of reverence, pigs +and boars grew into types of evil, and were described as the enemies of +the very gods they once typified ('Golden Bough,' II. 26-31, 56-57). The +Pig would, therefore, become the Black Pig, a type of cold and of winter +that awake in November, the old beginning of winter, to do battle with +the summer, and with the fruit and leaves, and finally, as I suggest; +and as I believe, for the purposes of poetry; of the darkness that will +at last destroy the gods and the world. The country people say there is +no shape for a spirit to take so dangerous as the shape of a pig; and a +Galway blacksmith--and blacksmiths are thought to be especially +protected--says he would be afraid to meet a pig on the road at night; +and another Galway man tells this story: 'There was a man coming the +road from Gort to Garryland one night, and he had a drop taken; and +before him, on the road, he saw a pig walking; and having a drop in, he +gave a shout, and made a kick at it, and bid it get out of that. And by +the time he got home, his arm was swelled from the shoulder to be as big +as a bag, and he couldn't use his hand with the pain of it. And his wife +brought him, after a few days, to a woman that used to do cures at +Rahasane. And on the road all she could do would hardly keep him from +lying down to sleep on the grass. And when they got to the woman she +knew all that happened; and, says she, it's well for you that your wife +didn't let you fall asleep on the grass, for if you had done that but +even for one instant, you'd be a lost man.' + +It is possible that bristles were associated with fertility, as the tail +certainly was, for a pig's tail is stuck into the ground in Courland, +that the corn may grow abundantly, and the tails of pigs, and other +animal embodiments of the corn genius, are dragged over the ground to +make it fertile in different countries. Professor Rhys, who considers +the bristleless boar a symbol of darkness and cold, rather than of +winter and cold, thinks it was without bristles because the darkness is +shorn away by the sun. It may have had different meanings, just as the +scourging of the man-god has had different though not contradictory +meanings in different epochs of the world. + +The Battle should, I believe, be compared with three other battles; a +battle the Sidhe are said to fight when a person is being taken away by +them; a battle they are said to fight in November for the harvest; the +great battle the Tribes of the goddess Danu fought, according to the +Gaelic chroniclers, with the Fomor at Moy Tura, or the Towery Plain. + +I have heard of the battle over the dying both in County Galway and in +the Isles of Arann, an old Arann fisherman having told me that it was +fought over two of his children, and that he found blood in a box he had +for keeping fish, when it was over; and I have written about it, and +given examples elsewhere. A faery doctor, on the borders of Galway and +Clare, explained it as a battle between the friends and enemies of the +dying, the one party trying to take them, the other trying to save them +from being taken. It may once, when the land of the Sidhe was the only +other world, and when every man who died was carried thither, have +always accompanied death. I suggest that the battle between the Tribes +of the goddess Danu, the powers of light, and warmth, and fruitfulness, +and goodness, and the Fomor, the powers of darkness, and cold, and +barrenness, and badness upon the Towery Plain, was the establishment of +the habitable world, the rout of the ancestral darkness; that the battle +among the Sidhe for the harvest is the annual battle of summer and +winter; that the battle among the Sidhe at a man's death is the battle +of life and death; and that the battle of the Black Pig is the battle +between the manifest world and the ancestral darkness at the end of all +things; and that all these battles are one, the battle of all things +with shadowy decay. Once a symbolism has possessed the imagination of +large numbers of men, it becomes, as I believe, an embodiment of +disembodied powers, and repeats itself in dreams and visions, age after +age. + + +THE SECRET ROSE. + +I find that I have unintentionally changed the old story of Conchobar's +death. He did not see the crucifixion in a vision, but was told about +it. He had been struck by a ball, made of the dried brain of a dead +enemy, and hurled out of a sling; and this ball had been left in his +head, and his head had been mended, the Book of Leinster says, with +thread of gold because his hair was like gold. Keating, a writer of the +time of Elizabeth, says, 'In that state did he remain seven years, until +the Friday on which Christ was crucified, according to some historians; +and when he saw the unusual changes of the creation and the eclipse of +the sun and the moon at its full, he asked of Bucrach, a Leinster +Druid, who was along with him, what was it that brought that unusual +change upon the planets of Heaven and Earth. "Jesus Christ, the son of +God," said the Druid, "who is now being crucified by the Jews." "That is +a pity," said Conchobar; "were I in his presence I would kill those who +were putting him to death." And with that he brought out his sword, and +rushed at a woody grove which was convenient to him, and began to cut +and fell it; and what he said was, that if he were among the Jews that +was the usage he would give them, and from the excessiveness of his fury +which seized upon him, the ball started out of his head, and some of the +brain came after it, and in that way he died. The wood of Lanshraigh, in +Feara Rois, is the name by which that shrubby wood is called.' + +I have imagined Cuchullain meeting Fand 'walking among flaming dew.' The +story of their love is one of the most beautiful of our old tales. Two +birds, bound one to another with a chain of gold, came to a lake side +where Cuchullain and the host of Uladh was encamped, and sang so sweetly +that all the host fell into a magic sleep. Presently they took the shape +of two beautiful women, and cast a magical weakness upon Cuchullain, in +which he lay for a year. At the year's end an Aengus, who was probably +Aengus the master of love, one of the greatest of the children of the +goddess Danu, came and sat upon his bedside, and sang how Fand, the wife +of Mannannan, the master of the sea, and of the islands of the dead, +loved him; and that if he would come into the country of the gods, where +there was wine and gold and silver, Fand, and Laban her sister, would +heal him of his magical weakness. Cuchullain went to the country of the +gods, and, after being for a month the lover of Fand, made her a +promise to meet her at a place called 'the Yew at the Strand's End,' and +came back to the earth. Emer, his mortal wife, won his love again, and +Mannannan came to 'the Yew at the Strand's End,' and carried Fand away. +When Cuchullain saw her going, his love for her fell upon him again, and +he went mad, and wandered among the mountains without food or drink, +until he was at last cured by a Druid drink of forgetfulness. + +I have founded the man 'who drove the gods out of their Liss,' or fort, +upon something I have read about Caolte after the battle of Gabra, when +almost all his companions were killed, driving the gods out of their +Liss, either at Osraighe, now Ossory, or at Eas Ruaidh, now Asseroe, a +waterfall at Ballyshannon, where Ilbreac, one of the children of the +goddess Danu, had a Liss. I am writing away from most of my books, and +have not been able to find the passage; but I certainly read it +somewhere. + +I have founded 'the proud dreaming king' upon Fergus, the son of Roigh, +the legendary poet of 'the quest of the bull of Cualge,' as he is in the +ancient story of Deirdre, and in modern poems by Ferguson. He married +Nessa, and Ferguson makes him tell how she took him 'captive in a single +look.' + + 'I am but an empty shade, + Far from life and passion laid; + Yet does sweet remembrance thrill + All my shadowy being still.' + +Presently, because of his great love, he gave up his throne to +Conchobar, her son by another, and lived out his days feasting, and +fighting, and hunting. His promise never to refuse a feast from a +certain comrade, and the mischief that came by his promise, and the +vengeance he took afterwards, are a principal theme of the poets. I +have explained my imagination of him in 'Fergus and the Druid,' and in a +little song in the second act of 'The Countess Kathleen.' + + * * * * * + +I have founded him 'who sold tillage, and house, and goods,' upon +something in 'The Red Pony,' a folk tale in Mr. Larminie's 'West Irish +Folk Tales.' A young man 'saw a light before him on the high road. When +he came as far, there was an open box on the road, and a light coming up +out of it. He took up the box. There was a lock of hair in it. Presently +he had to go to become the servant of a king for his living. There were +eleven boys. When they were going out into the stable at ten o'clock, +each of them took a light but he. He took no candle at all with him. +Each of them went into his own stable. When he went into his stable he +opened the box. He left it in a hole in the wall. The light was great. +It was twice as much as in the other stables.' The king hears of it, and +makes him show him the box. The king says, 'You must go and bring me the +woman to whom the hair belongs.' In the end, the young man, and not the +king, marries the woman. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Wind Among the Reeds, by William Butler Yeats + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS *** + +***** This file should be named 32233.txt or 32233.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/2/3/32233/ + +Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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