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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/32491-h.zip b/32491-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..62c9204 --- /dev/null +++ b/32491-h.zip diff --git a/32491-h/32491-h.htm b/32491-h/32491-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b8afb1a --- /dev/null +++ b/32491-h/32491-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2763 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wild Swans At Coole, by W. B. Yeats. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + + body {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + + p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em;} + .frontend {text-align: center; font-size: 105%; margin-bottom: 0em;} + .frontend2 {text-align: center; font-size: 70%; margin-top: 0em;} + .frontend3 {text-align: center; font-size: 80%;} + .transnote {margin: 2em 5% 1em 5%; font-size: 90%; padding: 0.5em 1em 0.5em 1em; + border: solid 1px silver;} + .dialogue {margin-left: 30%; margin-right: 10%;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;} /* all headings centered */ + + hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em; + margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;} + + img {border: 0;} + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + td {vertical-align: top;} /* keeps multi-line text in table cells lined up */ + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: 70%; + text-align: right;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .right {text-align: right;} + .rindent {text-align: right; margin-right: 5em;} + .rindent2 {text-align: right; margin-right: 12em;} + .lindent {text-align: left; margin-left: 2em;} + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .poem {margin-left:30%; margin-right:20%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i8 {display: block; margin-left: 8em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i10 {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i14 {display: block; margin-left: 14em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Wild Swans at Coole, by William Butler (W.B.) 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 Wild Swans at Coole + +Author: William Butler (W.B.) Yeats + +Release Date: May 23, 2010 [EBook #32491] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE *** + + + + +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 WILD SWANS AT COOLE</h2> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 160px;"> +<img src="images/img01.jpg" width="160" height="61" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class='frontend'>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</p> +<p class='frontend2'>NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS<br /> +ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO</p> + +<p class='frontend'> +MACMILLAN & CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span></p> +<p class='frontend2'>LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br /> +MELBOURNE</p> + +<p class='frontend'>THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span></p> +<p class='frontend2'>TORONTO</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<h1>THE WILD SWANS<br /> +AT COOLE</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>W. B. YEATS</h2> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 120px;"> +<img src="images/img02.jpg" width="120" height="27" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class='frontend3'>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +1919</p> + +<p class='frontend3'><i>All rights reserved</i></p> + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> + +<p class='frontend3'> +<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1917 and 1918</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">By</span> MARGARET C. ANDERSON.</p> + +<p class='frontend3'> +<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1918</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">By</span> HARRIET MONROE.</p> + +<p class='frontend3'> +<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1918 and 1919</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.</p> + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> + +<p class='frontend3'>Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1919.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 120px;"> +<img src="images/img03.jpg" width="120" height="21" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class='frontend3'>J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.<br /> +Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p>This book is, in part, a reprint of +<i>The Wild Swans at Coole</i>, printed a +year ago on my sister's hand-press +at Dundrum, Co. Dublin. I have +not, however, reprinted a play which +may be a part of a book of new +plays suggested by the dance plays of +Japan, and I have added a number +of new poems. Michael Robartes and +John Aherne, whose names occur in +one or other of these, are characters +in some stories I wrote years ago, +who have once again become a part +of the phantasmagoria through which +I can alone express my convictions +about the world. I have the fancy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span> +that I read the name John Aherne +among those of men prosecuted for +making a disturbance at the first +production of "The Play Boy," which +may account for his animosity to +myself.</p> + +<p class='rindent'>W. B. Y.</p> + +<p class='lindent'> +<span class="smcap">Ballylee, Co. Galway</span>,<br /> + <i>September 1918</i>.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="toc"> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Wild Swans at Coole</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Memory of Major Robert Gregory</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Irish Airman foresees his Death</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Men improve with the Years</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_14">14</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Collar-Bone of a Hare</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Under the Round Tower</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Solomon to Sheba</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Living Beauty</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Song</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">To a Young Beauty</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">To a Young Girl</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Scholars</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Tom O'Roughley</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Sad Shepherd</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Lines written in Dejection</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Dawn</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_40">40</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">On Woman</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Fisherman</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Hawk</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Memory</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Her Praise</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The People</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">His Phoenix</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Thought from Propertius</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Broken Dreams</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Deep-Sworn Vow</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Presences</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Balloon of the Mind</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">To a Squirrel at Kyle-Na-Gno</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">On being asked for a War Poem</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Memory of Alfred Pollexfen</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Upon a Dying Lady</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Ego Dominus Tuus</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Prayer on going into my House</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Phases of the Moon</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Cat and the Moon</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_102">102</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Saint and the Hunchback</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_104">104</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Two Songs of a Fool</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Another Song of a Fool</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Double Vision of Michael Robartes</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Note</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_115">115</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 WILD SWANS AT COOLE</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The trees are in their autumn beauty,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The woodland paths are dry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Under the October twilight the water<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mirrors a still sky;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon the brimming water among the stones<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are nine and fifty swans.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since I first made my count;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I saw, before I had well finished,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All suddenly mount<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And scatter wheeling in great broken rings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon their clamorous wings.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And now my heart is sore.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The first time on this shore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The bell-beat of their wings above my head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Trod with a lighter tread.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Unwearied still, lover by lover,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They paddle in the cold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Companionable streams or climb the air;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their hearts have not grown old;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Passion or conquest, wander where they will,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Attend upon them still.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But now they drift on the still water<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mysterious, beautiful;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Among what rushes will they build,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By what lake's edge or pool<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Delight men's eyes, when I awake some day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To find they have flown away?<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p> +<h2>IN MEMORY OF<br /> +MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY</h2> + + +<h3>1</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Now that we're almost settled in our house<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beside a fire of turf in the ancient tower,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And having talked to some late hour<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Discoverers of forgotten truth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or mere companions of my youth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All, all are in my thoughts to-night, being dead.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></div></div> + + +<h3>2</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Always we'd have the new friend meet the old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And we are hurt if either friend seem cold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there is salt to lengthen out the smart<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the affections of our heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And quarrels are blown up upon that head;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But not a friend that I would bring<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This night can set us quarrelling,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For all that come into my mind are dead.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>3</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That loved his learning better than mankind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though courteous to the worst; much falling he<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Brooded upon sanctity<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Till all his Greek and Latin learning seemed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A long blast upon the horn that brought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A little nearer to his thought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A measureless consummation that he dreamed.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>4</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That dying chose the living world for text<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And never could have rested in the tomb<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But that, long travelling, he had come<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Towards nightfall upon certain set apart<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In a most desolate stony place,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Towards nightfall upon a race<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Passionate and simple like his heart.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></div></div> + + +<h3>5</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And then I think of old George Pollexfen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In muscular youth well known to Mayo men<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For horsemanship at meets or at race-courses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That could have shown how purebred horses<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And solid men, for all their passion, live<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But as the outrageous stars incline<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By opposition, square and trine;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Having grown sluggish and contemplative.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>6</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">They were my close companions many a year,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A portion of my mind and life, as it were,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And now their breathless faces seem to look<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Out of some old picture-book;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am accustomed to their lack of breath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But not that my dear friend's dear son,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our Sidney and our perfect man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could share in that discourtesy of death.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>7</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For all things the delighted eye now sees<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were loved by him; the old storm-broken trees<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That cast their shadows upon road and bridge;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The tower set on the stream's edge;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The ford where drinking cattle make a stir<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nightly, and startled by that sound<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The water-hen must change her ground;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He might have been your heartiest welcomer.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></div></div> + + +<h3>8</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When with the Galway foxhounds he would ride<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From Castle Taylor to the Roxborough side<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or Esserkelly plain, few kept his pace;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At Mooneen he had leaped a place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So perilous that half the astonished meet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had shut their eyes, and where was it<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He rode a race without a bit?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yet his mind outran the horses' feet.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>9</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">We dreamed that a great painter had been born<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To cold Clare rock and Galway rock and thorn,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> +<span class="i0">To that stern colour and that delicate line<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That are our secret discipline<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wherein the gazing heart doubles her might.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yet he had the intensity<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To have published all to be a world's delight.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>10</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What other could so well have counselled us<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In all lovely intricacies of a house<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As he that practised or that understood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All work in metal or in wood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In moulded plaster or in carven stone?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all he did done perfectly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As though he had but that one trade alone.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></div></div> + + +<h3>11</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Some burn damp fagots, others may consume<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The entire combustible world in one small room<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As though dried straw, and if we turn about<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The bare chimney is gone black out<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because the work had finished in that flare.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As 'twere all life's epitome.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What made us dream that he could comb grey hair?<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>12</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +<span class="i0">All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or boyish intellect approved,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With some appropriate commentary on each;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Until imagination brought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A fitter welcome; but a thought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of that late death took all my heart for speech.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p> +<h2>AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES<br /> +HIS DEATH</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I know that I shall meet my fate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Somewhere among the clouds above;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those that I fight I do not hate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those that I guard I do not love;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My country is Kiltartan Cross,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No likely end could bring them loss<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or leave them happier than before.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor public man, nor angry crowds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A lonely impulse of delight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drove to this tumult in the clouds;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I balanced all, brought all to mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The years to come seemed waste of breath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A waste of breath the years behind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In balance with this life, this death.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p> +<h2>MEN IMPROVE WITH THE<br /> +YEARS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I am worn out with dreams;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A weather-worn, marble triton<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Among the streams;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all day long I look<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon this lady's beauty<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As though I had found in book<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A pictured beauty,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pleased to have filled the eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or the discerning ears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Delighted to be but wise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For men improve with the years;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yet and yet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is this my dream, or the truth?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O would that we had met<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When I had my burning youth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But I grow old among dreams,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A weather-worn, marble triton<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Among the streams.<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 COLLAR-BONE OF A<br /> +HARE</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Would I could cast a sail on the water<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where many a king has gone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And many a king's daughter,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And alight at the comely trees and the lawn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The playing upon pipes and the dancing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And learn that the best thing is<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To change my loves while dancing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And pay but a kiss for a kiss.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I would find by the edge of that water<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The collar-bone of a hare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Worn thin by the lapping of water,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +<span class="i0">At the old bitter world where they marry in churches,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And laugh over the untroubled water<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At all who marry in churches,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through the white thin bone of a hare.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> +<h2>UNDER THE ROUND TOWER</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Although I'd lie lapped up in linen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A deal I'd sweat and little earn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If I should live as live the neighbours,'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Stretch bones till the daylight come<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On great-grandfather's battered tomb.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Upon a grey old battered tombstone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In Glendalough beside the stream,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the O'Byrnes and Byrnes are buried,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He stretched his bones and fell in a dream<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of sun and moon that a good hour<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bellowed and pranced in the round tower;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Of golden king and silver lady,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bellowing up and bellowing round,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till toes mastered a sweet measure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mouth mastered a sweet sound,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Prancing round and prancing up<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Until they pranced upon the top.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That golden king and that wild lady<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sang till stars began to fade,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hands gripped in hands, toes close together,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hair spread on the wind they made;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That lady and that golden king<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could like a brace of blackbirds sing.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'It's certain that my luck is broken,'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That rambling jailbird Billy said;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Before nightfall I'll pick a pocket<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And snug it in a feather-bed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I cannot find the peace of home<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On great-grandfather's battered tomb.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p> +<h2>SOLOMON TO SHEBA</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sang Solomon to Sheba,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And kissed her dusky face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'All day long from mid-day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We have talked in the one place,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All day long from shadowless noon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We have gone round and round<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the narrow theme of love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like an old horse in a pound.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To Solomon sang Sheba,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Planted on his knees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'If you had broached a matter<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That might the learned please,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You had before the sun had thrown<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our shadows on the ground<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Discovered that my thoughts, not it,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are but a narrow pound.'<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sang Solomon to Sheba,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And kissed her Arab eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'There's not a man or woman<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Born under the skies<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dare match in learning with us two,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all day long we have found<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There's not a thing but love can make<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The world a narrow pound.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE LIVING BEAUTY</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From beauty that is cast out of a mould<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Appears, and when we have gone is gone again,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Being more indifferent to our solitude<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The living beauty is for younger men,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p> +<h2>A SONG</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I thought no more was needed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Youth to prolong<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than dumb-bell and foil<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To keep the body young.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, who could have foretold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That the heart grows old?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Though I have many words,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What woman's satisfied,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am no longer faint<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because at her side?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, who could have foretold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That the heart grows old?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I have not lost desire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the heart that I had,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I thought 'twould burn my body<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Laid on the death-bed.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But who could have foretold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That the heart grows old?<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p> +<h2>TO A YOUNG BEAUTY</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Dear fellow-artist, why so free<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With every sort of company,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With every Jack and Jill?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Choose your companions from the best;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who draws a bucket with the rest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Soon topples down the hill.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You may, that mirror for a school,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be passionate, not bountiful<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As common beauties may,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who were not born to keep in trim<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With old Ezekiel's cherubim<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But those of Beaujolet.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I know what wages beauty gives,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How hard a life her servant lives,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet praise the winters gone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There is not a fool can call me friend,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I may dine at journey's end<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With Landor and with Donne.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p> +<h2>TO A YOUNG GIRL</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">My dear, my dear, I know<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More than another<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What makes your heart beat so;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not even your own mother<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can know it as I know,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who broke my heart for her<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the wild thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That she denies<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And has forgot,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Set all her blood astir<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And glittered in her eyes.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE SCHOLARS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Bald heads forgetful of their sins,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Old, learned, respectable bald heads<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Edit and annotate the lines<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That young men, tossing on their beds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rhymed out in love's despair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">They'll cough in the ink to the world's end;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wear out the carpet with their shoes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Earning respect; have no strange friend;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If they have sinned nobody knows.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lord, what would they say<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Should their Catullus walk that way?<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> +<h2>TOM O'ROUGHLEY</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Though logic choppers rule the town,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And every man and maid and boy<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has marked a distant object down,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An aimless joy is a pure joy,'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or so did Tom O'Roughley say<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That saw the surges running by,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And wisdom is a butterfly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And not a gloomy bird of prey.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'If little planned is little sinned<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But little need the grave distress.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What's dying but a second wind?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How but in zigzag wantonness<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or something of that sort he said,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'And if my dearest friend were dead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I'd dance a measure on his grave.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE SAD SHEPHERD</h2> + + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year<br /> +I wished before it ceased.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Goatherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Nor bird nor beast</span><br /> +Could make me wish for anything this day,<br /> +Being old, but that the old alone might die,<br /> +And that would be against God's Providence.<br /> +Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>Never until this moment have we met<br /> +Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap<br /> +From stone to stone.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I am looking for strayed sheep;</span><br /> +Something has troubled me and in my trouble<br /> +I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,<br /> +For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble<br /> +And make the daylight sweet once more; but when<br /> +I had driven every rhyme into its place<br /> +The sheep had gone from theirs.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Goatherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">I know right well</span><br /> +What turned so good a shepherd from his charge.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +He that was best in every country sport<br /> +And every country craft, and of us all<br /> +Most courteous to slow age and hasty youth<br /> +Is dead.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Goatherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The boy that brings my griddle cake</span><br /> +Brought the bare news.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">He had thrown the crook away</span><br /> +And died in the great war beyond the sea.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Goatherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>He had often played his pipes among my hills<br /> +And when he played it was their loneliness,<br /> +The exultation of their stone, that cried<br /> +Under his fingers.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">I had it from his mother,</span><br /> +And his own flock was browsing at the door.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Goatherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +How does she bear her grief? There is not a shepherd<br /> +But grows more gentle when he speaks her name,<br /> +Remembering kindness done, and how can I,<br /> +That found when I had neither goat nor grazing<br /> +New welcome and old wisdom at her fire<br /> +Till winter blasts were gone, but speak of her<br /> +Even before his children and his wife.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +She goes about her house erect and calm<br /> +Between the pantry and the linen chest,<br /> +Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooks<br /> +Her labouring men, as though her darling lived<br /> +But for her grandson now; there is no change<br /> +But such as I have seen upon her face<br /> +Watching our shepherd sports at harvest-time<br /> +When her son's turn was over.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Goatherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Sing your song,</span><br /> +I too have rhymed my reveries, but youth<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>Is hot to show whatever it has found<br /> +And till that's done can neither work nor wait.<br /> +Old goatherds and old goats, if in all else<br /> +Youth can excel them in accomplishment,<br /> +Are learned in waiting.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">You cannot but have seen</span><br /> +That he alone had gathered up no gear,<br /> +Set carpenters to work on no wide table,<br /> +On no long bench nor lofty milking shed<br /> +As others will, when first they take possession,<br /> +But left the house as in his father's time<br /> +As though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo,<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>No settled man. And now that he is gone<br /> +There's nothing of him left but half a score<br /> +Of sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Goatherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +You have put the thought in rhyme.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">I worked all day</span><br /> +And when 'twas done so little had I done<br /> +That maybe 'I am sorry' in plain prose<br /> +Had sounded better to your mountain fancy.</p> + +<p class='rindent2'> +[<i>He sings.</i></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +'Like the speckled bird that steers<br /> +Thousands of leagues oversea,<br /> +And runs for a while or a while half-flies<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>Upon his yellow legs through our meadows,<br /> +He stayed for a while; and we<br /> +Had scarcely accustomed our ears<br /> +To his speech at the break of day,<br /> +Had scarcely accustomed our eyes<br /> +To his shape in the lengthening shadows,<br /> +Where the sheep are thrown in the pool,<br /> +When he vanished from ears and eyes.<br /> +I had wished a dear thing on that day<br /> +I heard him first, but man is a fool.'</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Goatherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +You sing as always of the natural life,<br /> +And I that made like music in my youth<br /> +Hearing it now have sighed for that young man<br /> +And certain lost companions of my own.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +They say that on your barren mountain ridge<br /> +You have measured out the road that the soul treads<br /> +When it has vanished from our natural eyes;<br /> +That you have talked with apparitions.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Goatherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">Indeed</span><br /> +My daily thoughts since the first stupor of youth<br /> +Have found the path my goats' feet cannot find.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have plucked<br /> +Some medicable herb to make our grief<br /> +Less bitter.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Goatherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They have brought me from that ridge</span><br /> +Seed pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy.</p> + +<p class='rindent2'> +[<i>Sings.</i></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +'He grows younger every second<br /> +That were all his birthdays reckoned<br /> +Much too solemn seemed;<br /> +Because of what he had dreamed,<br /> +Or the ambitions that he served,<br /> +Much too solemn and reserved.<br /> +Jaunting, journeying<br /> +To his own dayspring,<br /> +He unpacks the loaded pern<br /> +Of all 'twas pain or joy to learn,<br /> +Of all that he had made.<br /> +The outrageous war shall fade;<br /> +At some old winding whitethorn root<br /> +He'll practice on the shepherd's flute,<br /> +Or on the close-cropped grass<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>Court his shepherd lass,<br /> +Or run where lads reform our day-time<br /> +Till that is their long shouting play-time;<br /> +Knowledge he shall unwind<br /> +Through victories of the mind,<br /> +Till, clambering at the cradle side,<br /> +He dreams himself his mother's pride,<br /> +All knowledge lost in trance<br /> +Of sweeter ignorance.'</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +When I have shut these ewes and this old ram<br /> +Into the fold, we'll to the woods and there<br /> +Cut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn bark<br /> +But put no name and leave them at her door.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>To know the mountain and the valley grieve<br /> +May be a quiet thought to wife and mother,<br /> +And children when they spring up shoulder high.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>LINES WRITTEN IN<br /> +DEJECTION</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When have I last looked on<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the dark leopards of the moon?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the wild witches those most noble ladies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For all their broom-sticks and their tears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their angry tears, are gone.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The holy centaurs of the hills are banished;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I have nothing but harsh sun;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heroic mother moon has vanished,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And now that I have come to fifty years<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I must endure the timid sun.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE DAWN</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I would be ignorant as the dawn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That has looked down<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On that old queen measuring a town<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the pin of a brooch,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or on the withered men that saw<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From their pedantic Babylon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The careless planets in their courses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The stars fade out where the moon comes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And took their tablets and did sums;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I would be ignorant as the dawn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I would be—for no knowledge is worth a straw—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p> +<h2>ON WOMAN</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">May God be praised for woman<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That gives up all her mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A man may find in no man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A friendship of her kind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That covers all he has brought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As with her flesh and bone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor quarrels with a thought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because it is not her own.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Though pedantry denies<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It's plain the Bible means<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That Solomon grew wise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While talking with his queens.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet never could, although<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They say he counted grass,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Count all the praises due<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +<span class="i0">When Sheba was his lass,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When she the iron wrought, or<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When from the smithy fire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It shuddered in the water:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Harshness of their desire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That made them stretch and yawn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pleasure that comes with sleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shudder that made them one.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What else He give or keep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">God grant me—no, not here,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For I am not so bold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To hope a thing so dear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now I am growing old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But when if the tale's true<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Pestle of the moon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That pounds up all anew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Brings me to birth again—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To find what once I had<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And know what once I have known,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Until I am driven mad,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sleep driven from my bed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By tenderness and care,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pity, an aching head,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Gnashing of teeth, despair;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all because of some one<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Perverse creature of chance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And live like Solomon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That Sheba led a dance.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE FISHERMAN</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Although I can see him still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The freckled man who goes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To a grey place on a hill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In grey Connemara clothes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At dawn to cast his flies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It's long since I began<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To call up to the eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This wise and simple man.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All day I'd looked in the face<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What I had hoped 'twould be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To write for my own race<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the reality;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The living men that I hate,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dead man that I loved,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The craven man in his seat,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The insolent unreproved,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And no knave brought to book<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who has won a drunken cheer,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> +<span class="i0">The witty man and his joke<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Aimed at the commonest ear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The clever man who cries<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The catch-cries of the clown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The beating down of the wise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And great Art beaten down.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Maybe a twelvemonth since<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Suddenly I began,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In scorn of this audience,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Imagining a man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his sun-freckled face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And grey Connemara cloth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Climbing up to a place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where stone is dark under froth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the down turn of his wrist<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the flies drop in the stream:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A man who does not exist,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A man who is but a dream;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And cried, 'Before I am old<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I shall have written him one<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Poem maybe as cold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And passionate as the dawn.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE HAWK</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Call down the hawk from the air;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let him be hooded or caged<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till the yellow eye has grown mild,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For larder and spit are bare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The old cook enraged,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The scullion gone wild.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'I will not be clapped in a hood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now I have learnt to be proud<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hovering over the wood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the broken mist<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or tumbling cloud.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'What tumbling cloud did you cleave,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Last evening? that I, who had sat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dumbfounded before a knave,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Should give to my friend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A pretence of wit.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p> +<h2>MEMORY</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">One had a lovely face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And two or three had charm,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But charm and face were in vain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because the mountain grass<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cannot but keep the form<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the mountain hare has lain.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p> +<h2>HER PRAISE</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have gone about the house, gone up and down<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As a man does who has published a new book<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And though I have turned the talk by hook or crook<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Until her praise should be the uppermost theme,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A woman spoke of some new tale she had read,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A man confusedly in a half dream<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As though some other name ran in his head.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> +<span class="i0">She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I will talk no more of books or the long war<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But walk by the dry thorn until I have found<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some beggar sheltering from the wind, and there<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Manage the talk until her name come round.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If there be rags enough he will know her name<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though she had young men's praise and old men's blame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Among the poor both old and young gave her praise.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE PEOPLE</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'What have I earned for all that work,' I said,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'For all that I have done at my own charge?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The daily spite of this unmannerly town,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where who has served the most is most defamed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The reputation of his lifetime lost<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Between the night and morning. I might have lived,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And you know well how great the longing has been,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where every day my footfall should have lit<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the green shadow of Ferrara wall;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Or climbed among the images of the past—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The unperturbed and courtly images—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Evening and morning, the steep street of Urbino<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To where the duchess and her people talked<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The stately midnight through until they stood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In their great window looking at the dawn;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I might have had no friend that could not mix<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Courtesy and passion into one like those<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That saw the wicks grow yellow in the dawn;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I might have used the one substantial right<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My trade allows: chosen my company,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And chosen what scenery had pleased me best.'<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Thereon my phoenix answered in reproof,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'The drunkards, pilferers of public funds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the dishonest crowd I had driven away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When my luck changed and they dared meet my face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crawled from obscurity, and set upon me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those I had served and some that I had fed;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet never have I, now nor any time,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Complained of the people.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i14">All I could reply<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was: 'You, that have not lived in thought but deed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can have the purity of a natural force,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But I, whose virtues are the definitions<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the analytic mind, can neither close<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.'<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And yet, because my heart leaped at her words,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I was abashed, and now they come to mind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">After nine years, I sink my head abashed.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p> +<h2>HIS PHOENIX</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There is a queen in China, or maybe it's in Spain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And birthdays and holidays such praises can be heard<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of her unblemished lineaments, a whiteness with no stain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That she might be that sprightly girl who was trodden by a bird;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there's a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The young men every night applaud their Gaby's laughing eye,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Ruth St. Denis had more charm although she had poor luck,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From nineteen hundred nine or ten, Pavlova's had the cry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there's a player in the States who gathers up her cloak<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And flings herself out of the room when Juliet would be bride<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With all a woman's passion, a child's imperious way,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there are—but no matter if there are scores beside:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There's Margaret and Marjorie and Dorothy and Nan,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A Daphne and a Mary who live in privacy;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One's had her fill of lovers, another's had but one,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Another boasts, 'I pick and choose and have but two or three.'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If head and limb have beauty and the instep's high and light,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They can spread out what sail they please for all I have to say,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be but the breakers of men's hearts or engines of delight:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There'll be that crowd to make men wild through all the centuries,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And maybe there'll be some young belle walk out to make men wild<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who is my beauty's equal, though that my heart denies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But not the exact likeness, the simplicity of a child,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And that proud look as though she had gazed into the burning sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all the shapely body no tittle gone astray,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> +<span class="i0">I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet God's will be done,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p> +<h2>A THOUGHT FROM PROPERTIUS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">She might, so noble from head<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To great shapely knees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The long flowing line,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have walked to the altar<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through the holy images<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At Pallas Athene's side,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or been fit spoil for a centaur<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drunk with the unmixed wine.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p> +<h2>BROKEN DREAMS</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There is grey in your hair.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When you are passing;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because it was your prayer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Recovered him upon the bed of death.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For your sole sake—that all heart's ache have known,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And given to others all heart's ache,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From meagre girlhood's putting on<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Burdensome beauty—for your sole sake<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> +<span class="i0">So great her portion in that peace you make<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By merely walking in a room.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Your beauty can but leave among us<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Vague memories, nothing but memories.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A young man when the old men are done talking<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will say to an old man, 'Tell me of that lady<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The poet stubborn with his passion sang us<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When age might well have chilled his blood.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Vague memories, nothing but memories,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The certainty that I shall see that lady<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leaning or standing or walking<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> +<span class="i0">In the first loveliness of womanhood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has set me muttering like a fool.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You are more beautiful than any one<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yet your body had a flaw:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your small hands were not beautiful,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I am afraid that you will run<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And paddle to the wrist<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In that mysterious, always brimming lake<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where those that have obeyed the holy law<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Paddle and are perfect; leave unchanged<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hands that I have kissed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For old sakes' sake.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The last stroke of midnight dies.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All day in the one chair<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +<span class="i0">From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In rambling talk with an image of air:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Vague memories, nothing but memories.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p> +<h2>A DEEP-SWORN VOW</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Others because you did not keep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet always when I look death in the face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When I clamber to the heights of sleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or when I grow excited with wine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Suddenly I meet your face.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p> +<h2>PRESENCES</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">This night has been so strange that it seemed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if the hair stood up on my head.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From going-down of the sun I have dreamed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That women laughing, or timid or wild,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In rustle of lace or silken stuff,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Returned and yet unrequited love.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They stood in the door and stood between<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My great wood lecturn and the fire<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Till I could hear their hearts beating:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One is a harlot, and one a child<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That never looked upon man with desire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And one it may be a queen.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE BALLOON OF THE MIND</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Hands, do what you're bid;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bring the balloon of the mind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That bellies and drags in the wind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into its narrow shed.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p> +<h2>TO A SQUIRREL AT KYLE-NA-GNO</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Come play with me;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why should you run<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through the shaking tree<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As though I'd a gun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To strike you dead?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When all I would do<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is to scratch your head<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And let you go.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p> +<h2>ON BEING ASKED FOR A<br /> +WAR POEM</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I think it better that in times like these<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We have no gift to set a statesman right;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He has had enough of meddling who can please<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A young girl in the indolence of her youth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or an old man upon a winter's night.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p> +<h2>IN MEMORY OF ALFRED<br /> +POLLEXFEN</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Five-and-twenty years have gone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since old William Pollexfen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Laid his strong bones down in death<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By his wife Elizabeth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the grey stone tomb he made.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And after twenty years they laid<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In that tomb by him and her,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His son George, the astrologer;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Masons drove from miles away<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To scatter the Acacia spray<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon a melancholy man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who had ended where his breath began.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Many a son and daughter lies<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Far from the customary skies,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> +<span class="i0">The Mall and Eades's grammar school,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In London or in Liverpool;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But where is laid the sailor John?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That so many lands had known:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Quiet lands or unquiet seas<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the Indians trade or Japanese.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He never found his rest ashore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Moping for one voyage more.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where have they laid the sailor John?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And yesterday the youngest son,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A humorous, unambitious man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was buried near the astrologer;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And are we now in the tenth year?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since he, who had been contented long,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A nobody in a great throng,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Decided he would journey home,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now that his fiftieth year had come,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And 'Mr. Alfred' be again<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon the lips of common men<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who carried in their memory<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His childhood and his family.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +<span class="i0">At all these death-beds women heard<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A visionary white sea-bird<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lamenting that a man should die;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And with that cry I have raised my cry.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p> +<h2>UPON A DYING LADY</h2> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<h3>HER COURTESY</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Propped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She would not have us sad because she is lying there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And when she meets our gaze her eyes are laughter-lit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her speech a wicked tale that we may vie with her<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Matching our broken-hearted wit against her wit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thinking of saints and of Petronius Arbiter.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<h3>CERTAIN ARTISTS BRING HER DOLLS AND DRAWINGS</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Bring where our Beauty lies<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A new modelled doll, or drawing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a friend's or an enemy's<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Features, or maybe showing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her features when a tress<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of dull red hair was flowing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Over some silken dress<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cut in the Turkish fashion,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or it may be like a boy's.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We have given the world our passion<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We have naught for death but toys.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></div></div> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<h3>SHE TURNS THE DOLLS' FACES TO THE WALL</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Because to-day is some religious festival<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They had a priest say Mass, and even the Japanese,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heel up and weight on toe, must face the wall<br /></span> +<span class="i0">—Pedant in passion, learned in old courtesies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Vehement and witty she had seemed—; the Venetian lady<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who had seemed to glide to some intrigue in her red shoes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her domino, her panniered skirt copied from Longhi;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The meditative critic; all are on their toes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even our Beauty with her Turkish trousers on.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Because the priest must have like every dog his day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We and our dolls being but the world were best away.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<h3>THE END OF DAY</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">She is playing like a child<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And penance is the play,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fantastical and wild<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because the end of day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shows her that some one soon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will come from the house, and say—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though play is but half-done—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Come in and leave the play.'—<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>V</h3> + +<h3>HER RACE</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">She has not grown uncivil<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As narrow natures would<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And called the pleasures evil<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Happier days thought good;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She knows herself a woman<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No red and white of a face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or rank, raised from a common<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unreckonable race;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And how should her heart fail her<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or sickness break her will<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With her dead brother's valour<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For an example still.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<h3>HER COURAGE</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When her soul flies to the predestined dancing-place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(I have no speech but symbol, the pagan speech I made<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Amid the dreams of youth) let her come face to face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While wondering still to be a shade, with Grania's shade<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +<span class="i0">All but the perils of the woodland flight forgot<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That made her Dermuid dear, and some old cardinal<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pacing with half-closed eyelids in a sunny spot<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who had murmured of Giorgione at his latest breath—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Aye and Achilles, Timor, Babar, Barhaim, all<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who have lived in joy and laughed into the face of Death.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>VII</h3> + +<h3>HER FRIENDS BRING HER A CHRISTMAS TREE</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Pardon, great enemy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Without an angry thought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We've carried in our tree,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And here and there have bought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till all the boughs are gay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And she may look from the bed<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> +<span class="i0">On pretty things that may<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Please a fantastic head.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Give her a little grace,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What if a laughing eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have looked into your face—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is about to die.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p> +<h2>EGO DOMINUS TUUS</h2> + + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Hic</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +On the grey sand beside the shallow stream<br /> +Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still<br /> +A lamp burns on beside the open book<br /> +That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon<br /> +And though you have passed the best of life still trace<br /> +Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion<br /> +Magical shapes.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Ille</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">By the help of an image</span><br /> +I call to my own opposite, summon all<br /> +That I have handled least, least looked upon.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Hic</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +And I would find myself and not an image.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Ille</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +That is our modern hope and by its light<br /> +We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind<br /> +And lost the old nonchalance of the hand;<br /> +Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush<br /> +We are but critics, or but half create,<br /> +Timid, entangled, empty and abashed<br /> +Lacking the countenance of our friends.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Hic</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">And yet</span><br /> +The chief imagination of Christendom<br /> +Dante Alighieri so utterly found himself<br /> +That he has made that hollow face of his<br /> +More plain to the mind's eye than any face<br /> +But that of Christ.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Ille</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">And did he find himself,</span><br /> +Or was the hunger that had made it hollow<br /> +A hunger for the apple on the bough<br /> +Most out of reach? and is that spectral image<br /> +The man that Lapo and that Guido knew?<br /> +I think he fashioned from his opposite<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>An image that might have been a stony face,<br /> +Staring upon a bedouin's horse-hair roof<br /> +From doored and windowed cliff, or half upturned<br /> +Among the coarse grass and the camel dung.<br /> +He set his chisel to the hardest stone.<br /> +Being mocked by Guido for his lecherous life,<br /> +Derided and deriding, driven out<br /> +To climb that stair and eat that bitter bread,<br /> +He found the unpersuadable justice, he found<br /> +The most exalted lady loved by a man.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Hic</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Yet surely there are men who have made their art<br /> +Out of no tragic war, lovers of life,<br /> +Impulsive men that look for happiness<br /> +And sing when they have found it.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Ille</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">No, not sing,</span><br /> +For those that love the world serve it in action,<br /> +Grow rich, popular and full of influence,<br /> +And should they paint or write still it is action:<br /> +The struggle of the fly in marmalade.<br /> +The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours,<br /> +The sentimentalist himself; while art<br /> +Is but a vision of reality.<br /> +What portion in the world can the artist have<br /> +Who has awakened from the common dream<br /> +But dissipation and despair?</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Hic</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">And yet</span><br /> +No one denies to Keats love of the world;<br /> +Remember his deliberate happiness.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Ille</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +His art is happy but who knows his mind?<br /> +I see a schoolboy when I think of him,<br /> +With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,<br /> +For certainly he sank into his grave<br /> +His senses and his heart unsatisfied,<br /> +And made—being poor, ailing and ignorant,<br /> +Shut out from all the luxury of the world,<br /> +The coarse-bred son of a livery stable-keeper—<br /> +Luxuriant song.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Hic</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Why should you leave the lamp</span><br /> +Burning alone beside an open book,<br /> +And trace these characters upon the sands;<br /> +A style is found by sedentary toil<br /> +And by the imitation of great masters.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Ille</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Because I seek an image, not a book.<br /> +Those men that in their writings are most wise<br /> +Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.<br /> +I call to the mysterious one who yet<br /> +Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream<br /> +And look most like me, being indeed my double,<br /> +And prove of all imaginable things<br /> +The most unlike, being my anti-self,<br /> +And standing by these characters disclose<br /> +All that I seek; and whisper it as though<br /> +He were afraid the birds, who cry aloud<br /> +Their momentary cries before it is dawn,<br /> +Would carry it away to blasphemous men.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>A PRAYER ON GOING INTO +MY HOUSE</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">God grant a blessing on this tower and cottage<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on my heirs, if all remain unspoiled,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No table, or chair or stool not simple enough<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For shepherd lads in Galilee; and grant<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I myself for portions of the year<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May handle nothing and set eyes on nothing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But what the great and passionate have used<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Throughout so many varying centuries.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> +<span class="i0">We take it for the norm; yet should I dream<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sinbad the sailor's brought a painted chest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or image, from beyond the Loadstone Mountain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That dream is a norm; and should some limb of the devil<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Destroy the view by cutting down an ash<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That shades the road, or setting up a cottage<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Planned in a government office, shorten his life,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Manacle his soul upon the Red Sea bottom.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE PHASES OF THE MOON</h2> + + +<p class='dialogue'> +<i>An old man cocked his ear upon a bridge;<br /> +He and his friend, their faces to the South,<br /> +Had trod the uneven road. Their boots were soiled,<br /> +Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape;<br /> +They had kept a steady pace as though their beds,<br /> +Despite a dwindling and late risen moon,<br /> +Were distant. An old man cocked his ear.</i></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +What made that sound?<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">A rat or water-hen</span><br /> +Splashed, or an otter slid into the stream.<br /> +We are on the bridge; that shadow is the tower,<br /> +And the light proves that he is reading still.<br /> +He has found, after the manner of his kind,<br /> +Mere images; chosen this place to live in<br /> +Because, it may be, of the candle light<br /> +From the far tower where Milton's platonist<br /> +Sat late, or Shelley's visionary prince:<br /> +The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved,<br /> +An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil;<br /> +And now he seeks in book or manuscript<br /> +What he shall never find.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">Why should not you</span><br /> +Who know it all ring at his door, and speak<br /> +Just truth enough to show that his whole life<br /> +Will scarcely find for him a broken crust<br /> +Of all those truths that are your daily bread;<br /> +And when you have spoken take the roads again?</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +He wrote of me in that extravagant style<br /> +He had learnt from Pater, and to round his tale<br /> +Said I was dead; and dead I chose to be.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Sing me the changes of the moon once more;<br /> +True song, though speech: 'mine author sung it me.'</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon,<br /> +The full and the moon's dark and all the crescents,<br /> +Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty<br /> +The cradles that a man must needs be rocked in:<br /> +For there's no human life at the full or the dark.<br /> +From the first crescent to the half, the dream<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>But summons to adventure and the man<br /> +Is always happy like a bird or a beast;<br /> +But while the moon is rounding towards the full<br /> +He follows whatever whim's most difficult<br /> +Among whims not impossible, and though scarred<br /> +As with the cat-o'-nine-tails of the mind,<br /> +His body moulded from within his body<br /> +Grows comelier. Eleven pass, and then<br /> +Athenae takes Achilles by the hair,<br /> +Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born,<br /> +Because the heroes' crescent is the twelfth.<br /> +And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must,<br /> +Before the full moon, helpless as a worm.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war<br /> +In its own being, and when that war's begun<br /> +There is no muscle in the arm; and after<br /> +Under the frenzy of the fourteenth moon<br /> +The soul begins to tremble into stillness,<br /> +To die into the labyrinth of itself!</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Sing out the song; sing to the end, and sing<br /> +The strange reward of all that discipline.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +All thought becomes an image and the soul<br /> +Becomes a body: that body and that soul<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>Too perfect at the full to lie in a cradle,<br /> +Too lonely for the traffic of the world:<br /> +Body and soul cast out and cast away<br /> +Beyond the visible world.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">All dreams of the soul</span><br /> +End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Have you not always known it?</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">The song will have it</span><br /> +That those that we have loved got their long fingers<br /> +From death, and wounds, or on Sinai's top,<br /> +Or from some bloody whip in their own hands.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>They ran from cradle to cradle till at last<br /> +Their beauty dropped out of the loneliness<br /> +Of body and soul.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">The lovers' heart knows that.</span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +It must be that the terror in their eyes<br /> +Is memory or foreknowledge of the hour<br /> +When all is fed with light and heaven is bare.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +When the moon's full those creatures of the full<br /> +Are met on the waste hills by country men<br /> +Who shudder and hurry by: body and soul<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>Estranged amid the strangeness of themselves,<br /> +Caught up in contemplation, the mind's eye<br /> +Fixed upon images that once were thought,<br /> +For separate, perfect, and immovable<br /> +Images can break the solitude<br /> +Of lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes.<br /></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<i>And thereupon with aged, high-pitched voice<br /> +Aherne laughed, thinking of the man within,<br /> +His sleepless candle and laborious pen.</i></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +And after that the crumbling of the moon.<br /> +The soul remembering its loneliness<br /> +Shudders in many cradles; all is changed,<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>It would be the World's servant, and as it serves,<br /> +Choosing whatever task's most difficult<br /> +Among tasks not impossible, it takes<br /> +Upon the body and upon the soul<br /> +The coarseness of the drudge.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">Before the full</span><br /> +It sought itself and afterwards the world.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Because you are forgotten, half out of life,<br /> +And never wrote a book your thought is clear.<br /> +Reformer, merchant, statesman, learned man,<br /> +Dutiful husband, honest wife by turn,<br /> +Cradle upon cradle, and all in flight and all<br /> +Deformed because there is no deformity<br /> +But saves us from a dream.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">And what of those</span><br /> +That the last servile crescent has set free?</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Because all dark, like those that are all light,<br /> +They are cast beyond the verge, and in a cloud,<br /> +Crying to one another like the bats;<br /> +And having no desire they cannot tell<br /> +What's good or bad, or what it is to triumph<br /> +At the perfection of one's own obedience;<br /> +And yet they speak what's blown into the mind;<br /> +Deformed beyond deformity, unformed,<br /> +Insipid as the dough before it is baked,<br /> +They change their bodies at a word.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'><span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">And then?</span></p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +When all the dough has been so kneaded up<br /> +That it can take what form cook Nature fancy<br /> +The first thin crescent is wheeled round once more.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +But the escape; the song's not finished yet.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Robartes</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Hunchback and saint and fool are the last crescents.<br /> +The burning bow that once could shoot an arrow<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>Out of the up and down, the wagon wheel<br /> +Of beauty's cruelty and wisdom's chatter,<br /> +Out of that raving tide is drawn betwixt<br /> +Deformity of body and of mind.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Aherne</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Were not our beds far off I'd ring the bell,<br /> +Stand under the rough roof-timbers of the hall<br /> +Beside the castle door, where all is stark<br /> +Austerity, a place set out for wisdom<br /> +That he will never find; I'd play a part;<br /> +He would never know me after all these years<br /> +But take me for some drunken country man;<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>I'd stand and mutter there until he caught<br /> +'Hunchback and saint and fool,' and that they came<br /> +Under the three last crescents of the moon,<br /> +And then I'd stagger out. He'd crack his wits<br /> +Day after day, yet never find the meaning.<br /> +<br /> +<i>And then he laughed to think that what seemed hard<br /> +Should be so simple—a bat rose from the hazels<br /> +And circled round him with its squeaky cry,<br /> +The light in the tower window was put out.</i><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE CAT AND THE MOON</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The cat went here and there<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the moon spun round like a top,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the nearest kin of the moon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The creeping cat looked up.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For wander and wail as he would<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The pure cold light in the sky<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Troubled his animal blood.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Minnaloushe runs in the grass,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lifting his delicate feet.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When two close kindred meet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What better than call a dance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Maybe the moon may learn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tired of that courtly fashion,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> +<span class="i0">A new dance turn.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Minnaloushe creeps through the grass<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From moonlit place to place,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sacred moon overhead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has taken a new phase.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will pass from change to change,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And that from round to crescent,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From crescent to round they range?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Minnaloushe creeps through the grass<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alone, important and wise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lifts to the changing moon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His changing eyes.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE SAINT AND THE<br /> +HUNCHBACK</h2> + + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Hunchback</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +Stand up and lift your hand and bless<br /> +A man that finds great bitterness<br /> +In thinking of his lost renown.<br /> +A Roman Caesar is held down<br /> +Under this hump.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Saint</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">God tries each man</span><br /> +According to a different plan.<br /> +I shall not cease to bless because<br /> +I lay about me with the taws<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>That night and morning I may thrash<br /> +Greek Alexander from my flesh,<br /> +Augustus Caesar, and after these<br /> +That great rogue Alcibiades.</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Hunchback</span></p> + +<p class='dialogue'> +To all that in your flesh have stood<br /> +And blessed, I give my gratitude,<br /> +Honoured by all in their degrees,<br /> +But most to Alcibiades.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>TWO SONGS OF A FOOL</h2> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A speckled cat and a tame hare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Eat at my hearthstone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sleep there;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And both look up to me alone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For learning and defence<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As I look up to Providence.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I start out of my sleep to think<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some day I may forget<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their food and drink;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or, the house door left unshut,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hare may run till it's found<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I bear a burden that might well try<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Men that do all by rule,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And what can I<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That am a wandering witted fool<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But pray to God that He ease<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My great responsibilities.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The speckled cat slept on my knee;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We never thought to enquire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the brown hare might be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And whether the door were shut.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who knows how she drank the wind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stretched up on two legs from the mat,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Before she had settled her mind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To drum with her heel and to leap:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had I but awakened from sleep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And called her name she had heard,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It may be, and had not stirred,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That now, it may be, has found<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p> +<h2>ANOTHER SONG OF A FOOL</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">This great purple butterfly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the prison of my hands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has a learning in his eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not a poor fool understands.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Once he lived a schoolmaster<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a stark, denying look,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A string of scholars went in fear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of his great birch and his great book.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Like the clangour of a bell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That is how he learnt so well<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To take the roses for his meat.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE DOUBLE VISION OF<br /> +MICHAEL ROBARTES</h2> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">On the grey rock of Cashel the mind's eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has called up the cold spirits that are born<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the old moon is vanished from the sky<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the new still hides her horn.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Under blank eyes and fingers never still<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The particular is pounded till it is man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When had I my own will?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, not since life began.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Constrained, arraigned, baffled, bent and unbent<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By these wire-jointed jaws and limbs of wood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Themselves obedient,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Knowing not evil and good;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Obedient to some hidden magical breath.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They do not even feel, so abstract are they,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So dead beyond our death,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Triumph that we obey.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A Buddha, hand at rest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hand lifted up that blest;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And right between these two a girl at play<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> +<span class="i0">That it may be had danced her life away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For now being dead it seemed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That she of dancing dreamed.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Although I saw it all in the mind's eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There can be nothing solider till I die;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I saw by the moon's light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now at its fifteenth night.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">One lashed her tail; her eyes lit by the moon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gazed upon all things known, all things unknown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In triumph of intellect<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With motionless head erect.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That other's moonlit eyeballs never moved,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Being fixed on all things loved, all things unloved,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet little peace he had<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For those that love are sad.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Oh, little did they care who danced between,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And little she by whom her dance was seen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So that she danced. No thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Body perfection brought,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For what but eye and ear silence the mind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the minute particulars of mankind?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mind moved yet seemed to stop<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As 'twere a spinning-top.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">In contemplation had those three so wrought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon a moment, and so stretched it out<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That they, time overthrown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were dead yet flesh and bone.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></div></div> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I knew that I had seen, had seen at last<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That girl my unremembering nights hold fast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or else my dreams that fly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If I should rub an eye,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And yet in flying fling into my meat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A crazy juice that makes the pulses beat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As though I had been undone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By Homer's Paragon<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Who never gave the burning town a thought;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To such a pitch of folly I am brought,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Being caught between the pull<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the dark moon and the full,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The commonness of thought and images<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That have the frenzy of our Western seas.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thereon I made my moan,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And after kissed a stone,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And after that arranged it in a song<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Seeing that I, ignorant for so long,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had been rewarded thus<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In Cormac's ruined house.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p> +<h2>NOTE</h2> + + +<p class='center'>"<i>Unpack the loaded pern</i>," p. 36.</p> + +<p>When I was a child at Sligo I could see above +my grandfather's trees a little column of smoke +from "the pern mill," and was told that "pern" +was another name for the spool, as I was accustomed +to call it, on which thread was wound. +One could not see the chimney for the trees, and +the smoke looked as if it came from the mountain, +and one day a foreign sea-captain asked me if +that was a burning mountain.</p> + +<p class='rindent'>W. B. Y.</p> + +<p class='frontend3'>Printed in the United States of America.</p> + + +<div class='transnote'> +<h3>Transcriber's Note</h3> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_64">64</a>: "lecturn" <i>sic</i>—alternative spelling +confirmed.</p> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Swans at Coole, by +William Butler (W.B.) 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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 Wild Swans at Coole + +Author: William Butler (W.B.) Yeats + +Release Date: May 23, 2010 [EBook #32491] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE *** + + + + +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 WILD SWANS AT COOLE + +[Illustration] + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY +NEW YORK - BOSTON - CHICAGO - DALLAS +ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO + +MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED +LONDON - BOMBAY - CALCUTTA +MELBOURNE + +THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. +TORONTO + + + + +THE WILD SWANS +AT COOLE + +BY + +W. B. YEATS + +New York +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY +1919 + +_All rights reserved_ + +COPYRIGHT, 1917 AND 1918, +BY MARGARET C. ANDERSON. + +COPYRIGHT, 1918, +BY HARRIET MONROE. + +COPYRIGHT, 1918 AND 1919, +BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. + +Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1919. + +Norwood Press +J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. +Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. + + + + +PREFACE + + +This book is, in part, a reprint of _The Wild Swans at Coole_, printed a +year ago on my sister's hand-press at Dundrum, Co. Dublin. I have not, +however, reprinted a play which may be a part of a book of new plays +suggested by the dance plays of Japan, and I have added a number of new +poems. Michael Robartes and John Aherne, whose names occur in one or +other of these, are characters in some stories I wrote years ago, who +have once again become a part of the phantasmagoria through which I can +alone express my convictions about the world. I have the fancy that I +read the name John Aherne among those of men prosecuted for making a +disturbance at the first production of "The Play Boy," which may account +for his animosity to myself. + +W. B. Y. + +BALLYLEE, CO. GALWAY, +_September 1918_. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE 1 + +IN MEMORY OF MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY 4 + +AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES HIS DEATH 13 + +MEN IMPROVE WITH THE YEARS 14 + +THE COLLAR-BONE OF A HARE 15 + +UNDER THE ROUND TOWER 17 + +SOLOMON TO SHEBA 19 + +THE LIVING BEAUTY 21 + +A SONG 22 + +TO A YOUNG BEAUTY 23 + +TO A YOUNG GIRL 24 + +THE SCHOLARS 25 + +TOM O'ROUGHLEY 26 + +THE SAD SHEPHERD 27 + +LINES WRITTEN IN DEJECTION 39 + +THE DAWN 40 + +ON WOMAN 41 + +THE FISHERMAN 44 + +THE HAWK 46 + +MEMORY 47 + +HER PRAISE 48 + +THE PEOPLE 50 + +HIS PHOENIX 54 + +A THOUGHT FROM PROPERTIUS 58 + +BROKEN DREAMS 59 + +A DEEP-SWORN VOW 63 + +PRESENCES 64 + +THE BALLOON OF THE MIND 66 + +TO A SQUIRREL AT KYLE-NA-GNO 67 + +ON BEING ASKED FOR A WAR POEM 68 + +IN MEMORY OF ALFRED POLLEXFEN 69 + +UPON A DYING LADY 72 + +EGO DOMINUS TUUS 79 + +A PRAYER ON GOING INTO MY HOUSE 86 + +THE PHASES OF THE MOON 88 + +THE CAT AND THE MOON 102 + +THE SAINT AND THE HUNCHBACK 104 + +TWO SONGS OF A FOOL 106 + +ANOTHER SONG OF A FOOL 108 + +THE DOUBLE VISION OF MICHAEL ROBARTES 109 + +NOTE 115 + + + + +THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE + + + The trees are in their autumn beauty, + The woodland paths are dry, + Under the October twilight the water + Mirrors a still sky; + Upon the brimming water among the stones + Are nine and fifty swans. + + The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me + Since I first made my count; + I saw, before I had well finished, + All suddenly mount + And scatter wheeling in great broken rings + Upon their clamorous wings. + + I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, + And now my heart is sore. + All's changed since I, hearing at twilight, + The first time on this shore, + The bell-beat of their wings above my head, + Trod with a lighter tread. + + Unwearied still, lover by lover, + They paddle in the cold, + Companionable streams or climb the air; + Their hearts have not grown old; + Passion or conquest, wander where they will, + Attend upon them still. + + But now they drift on the still water + Mysterious, beautiful; + Among what rushes will they build, + By what lake's edge or pool + Delight men's eyes, when I awake some day + To find they have flown away? + + + + +IN MEMORY OF MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY + + +1 + + Now that we're almost settled in our house + I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us + Beside a fire of turf in the ancient tower, + And having talked to some late hour + Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed: + Discoverers of forgotten truth + Or mere companions of my youth, + All, all are in my thoughts to-night, being dead. + + +2 + + Always we'd have the new friend meet the old, + And we are hurt if either friend seem cold, + And there is salt to lengthen out the smart + In the affections of our heart, + And quarrels are blown up upon that head; + But not a friend that I would bring + This night can set us quarrelling, + For all that come into my mind are dead. + + +3 + + Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, + That loved his learning better than mankind, + Though courteous to the worst; much falling he + Brooded upon sanctity + Till all his Greek and Latin learning seemed + A long blast upon the horn that brought + A little nearer to his thought + A measureless consummation that he dreamed. + + +4 + + And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, + That dying chose the living world for text + And never could have rested in the tomb + But that, long travelling, he had come + Towards nightfall upon certain set apart + In a most desolate stony place, + Towards nightfall upon a race + Passionate and simple like his heart. + + +5 + + And then I think of old George Pollexfen, + In muscular youth well known to Mayo men + For horsemanship at meets or at race-courses, + That could have shown how purebred horses + And solid men, for all their passion, live + But as the outrageous stars incline + By opposition, square and trine; + Having grown sluggish and contemplative. + + +6 + + They were my close companions many a year, + A portion of my mind and life, as it were, + And now their breathless faces seem to look + Out of some old picture-book; + I am accustomed to their lack of breath, + But not that my dear friend's dear son, + Our Sidney and our perfect man, + Could share in that discourtesy of death. + + +7 + + For all things the delighted eye now sees + Were loved by him; the old storm-broken trees + That cast their shadows upon road and bridge; + The tower set on the stream's edge; + The ford where drinking cattle make a stir + Nightly, and startled by that sound + The water-hen must change her ground; + He might have been your heartiest welcomer. + + +8 + + When with the Galway foxhounds he would ride + From Castle Taylor to the Roxborough side + Or Esserkelly plain, few kept his pace; + At Mooneen he had leaped a place + So perilous that half the astonished meet + Had shut their eyes, and where was it + He rode a race without a bit? + And yet his mind outran the horses' feet. + + +9 + + We dreamed that a great painter had been born + To cold Clare rock and Galway rock and thorn, + To that stern colour and that delicate line + That are our secret discipline + Wherein the gazing heart doubles her might. + Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, + And yet he had the intensity + To have published all to be a world's delight. + + +10 + + What other could so well have counselled us + In all lovely intricacies of a house + As he that practised or that understood + All work in metal or in wood, + In moulded plaster or in carven stone? + Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, + And all he did done perfectly + As though he had but that one trade alone. + + +11 + + Some burn damp fagots, others may consume + The entire combustible world in one small room + As though dried straw, and if we turn about + The bare chimney is gone black out + Because the work had finished in that flare. + Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, + As 'twere all life's epitome. + What made us dream that he could comb grey hair? + + +12 + + I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind + That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind + All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved, + Or boyish intellect approved, + With some appropriate commentary on each; + Until imagination brought + A fitter welcome; but a thought + Of that late death took all my heart for speech. + + + + +AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES HIS DEATH + + + I know that I shall meet my fate + Somewhere among the clouds above; + Those that I fight I do not hate + Those that I guard I do not love; + My country is Kiltartan Cross, + My countrymen Kiltartan's poor, + No likely end could bring them loss + Or leave them happier than before. + Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, + Nor public man, nor angry crowds, + A lonely impulse of delight + Drove to this tumult in the clouds; + I balanced all, brought all to mind, + The years to come seemed waste of breath, + A waste of breath the years behind + In balance with this life, this death. + + + + +MEN IMPROVE WITH THE YEARS + + + I am worn out with dreams; + A weather-worn, marble triton + Among the streams; + And all day long I look + Upon this lady's beauty + As though I had found in book + A pictured beauty, + Pleased to have filled the eyes + Or the discerning ears, + Delighted to be but wise, + For men improve with the years; + And yet and yet + Is this my dream, or the truth? + O would that we had met + When I had my burning youth; + But I grow old among dreams, + A weather-worn, marble triton + Among the streams. + + + + +THE COLLAR-BONE OF A HARE + + + Would I could cast a sail on the water + Where many a king has gone + And many a king's daughter, + And alight at the comely trees and the lawn, + The playing upon pipes and the dancing, + And learn that the best thing is + To change my loves while dancing + And pay but a kiss for a kiss. + + I would find by the edge of that water + The collar-bone of a hare + Worn thin by the lapping of water, + And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare + At the old bitter world where they marry in churches, + And laugh over the untroubled water + At all who marry in churches, + Through the white thin bone of a hare. + + + + +UNDER THE ROUND TOWER + + + 'Although I'd lie lapped up in linen + A deal I'd sweat and little earn + If I should live as live the neighbours,' + Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne; + 'Stretch bones till the daylight come + On great-grandfather's battered tomb.' + + Upon a grey old battered tombstone + In Glendalough beside the stream, + Where the O'Byrnes and Byrnes are buried, + He stretched his bones and fell in a dream + Of sun and moon that a good hour + Bellowed and pranced in the round tower; + Of golden king and silver lady, + Bellowing up and bellowing round, + Till toes mastered a sweet measure, + Mouth mastered a sweet sound, + Prancing round and prancing up + Until they pranced upon the top. + + That golden king and that wild lady + Sang till stars began to fade, + Hands gripped in hands, toes close together, + Hair spread on the wind they made; + That lady and that golden king + Could like a brace of blackbirds sing. + + 'It's certain that my luck is broken,' + That rambling jailbird Billy said; + 'Before nightfall I'll pick a pocket + And snug it in a feather-bed, + I cannot find the peace of home + On great-grandfather's battered tomb.' + + + + +SOLOMON TO SHEBA + + + Sang Solomon to Sheba, + And kissed her dusky face, + 'All day long from mid-day + We have talked in the one place, + All day long from shadowless noon + We have gone round and round + In the narrow theme of love + Like an old horse in a pound.' + + To Solomon sang Sheba, + Planted on his knees, + 'If you had broached a matter + That might the learned please, + You had before the sun had thrown + Our shadows on the ground + Discovered that my thoughts, not it, + Are but a narrow pound.' + + Sang Solomon to Sheba, + And kissed her Arab eyes, + 'There's not a man or woman + Born under the skies + Dare match in learning with us two, + And all day long we have found + There's not a thing but love can make + The world a narrow pound.' + + + + +THE LIVING BEAUTY + + + I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content-- + Seeing that time has frozen up the blood, + The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent-- + From beauty that is cast out of a mould + In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears, + Appears, and when we have gone is gone again, + Being more indifferent to our solitude + Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old, + The living beauty is for younger men, + We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears. + + + + +A SONG + + + I thought no more was needed + Youth to prolong + Than dumb-bell and foil + To keep the body young. + Oh, who could have foretold + That the heart grows old? + + Though I have many words, + What woman's satisfied, + I am no longer faint + Because at her side? + Oh, who could have foretold + That the heart grows old? + + I have not lost desire + But the heart that I had, + I thought 'twould burn my body + Laid on the death-bed. + But who could have foretold + That the heart grows old? + + + + +TO A YOUNG BEAUTY + + + Dear fellow-artist, why so free + With every sort of company, + With every Jack and Jill? + Choose your companions from the best; + Who draws a bucket with the rest + Soon topples down the hill. + + You may, that mirror for a school, + Be passionate, not bountiful + As common beauties may, + Who were not born to keep in trim + With old Ezekiel's cherubim + But those of Beaujolet. + + I know what wages beauty gives, + How hard a life her servant lives, + Yet praise the winters gone; + There is not a fool can call me friend, + And I may dine at journey's end + With Landor and with Donne. + + + + +TO A YOUNG GIRL + + + My dear, my dear, I know + More than another + What makes your heart beat so; + Not even your own mother + Can know it as I know, + Who broke my heart for her + When the wild thought, + That she denies + And has forgot, + Set all her blood astir + And glittered in her eyes. + + + + +THE SCHOLARS + + + Bald heads forgetful of their sins, + Old, learned, respectable bald heads + Edit and annotate the lines + That young men, tossing on their beds, + Rhymed out in love's despair + To flatter beauty's ignorant ear. + + They'll cough in the ink to the world's end; + Wear out the carpet with their shoes + Earning respect; have no strange friend; + If they have sinned nobody knows. + Lord, what would they say + Should their Catullus walk that way? + + + + +TOM O'ROUGHLEY + + + 'Though logic choppers rule the town, + And every man and maid and boy + Has marked a distant object down, + An aimless joy is a pure joy,' + Or so did Tom O'Roughley say + That saw the surges running by, + 'And wisdom is a butterfly + And not a gloomy bird of prey. + + 'If little planned is little sinned + But little need the grave distress. + What's dying but a second wind? + How but in zigzag wantonness + Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?' + Or something of that sort he said, + 'And if my dearest friend were dead + I'd dance a measure on his grave.' + + + + +THE SAD SHEPHERD + + +SHEPHERD + +That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year +I wished before it ceased. + +GOATHERD + + Nor bird nor beast +Could make me wish for anything this day, +Being old, but that the old alone might die, +And that would be against God's Providence. +Let the young wish. But what has brought you here? +Never until this moment have we met +Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap +From stone to stone. + +SHEPHERD + + I am looking for strayed sheep; +Something has troubled me and in my trouble +I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone, +For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble +And make the daylight sweet once more; but when +I had driven every rhyme into its place +The sheep had gone from theirs. + +GOATHERD + + I know right well +What turned so good a shepherd from his charge. + +SHEPHERD + +He that was best in every country sport +And every country craft, and of us all +Most courteous to slow age and hasty youth +Is dead. + +GOATHERD + + The boy that brings my griddle cake +Brought the bare news. + +SHEPHERD + + He had thrown the crook away +And died in the great war beyond the sea. + +GOATHERD + +He had often played his pipes among my hills +And when he played it was their loneliness, +The exultation of their stone, that cried +Under his fingers. + +SHEPHERD + + I had it from his mother, +And his own flock was browsing at the door. + +GOATHERD + +How does she bear her grief? There is not a shepherd +But grows more gentle when he speaks her name, +Remembering kindness done, and how can I, +That found when I had neither goat nor grazing +New welcome and old wisdom at her fire +Till winter blasts were gone, but speak of her +Even before his children and his wife. + +SHEPHERD + +She goes about her house erect and calm +Between the pantry and the linen chest, +Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooks +Her labouring men, as though her darling lived +But for her grandson now; there is no change +But such as I have seen upon her face +Watching our shepherd sports at harvest-time +When her son's turn was over. + +GOATHERD + + Sing your song, +I too have rhymed my reveries, but youth +Is hot to show whatever it has found +And till that's done can neither work nor wait. +Old goatherds and old goats, if in all else +Youth can excel them in accomplishment, +Are learned in waiting. + +SHEPHERD + + You cannot but have seen +That he alone had gathered up no gear, +Set carpenters to work on no wide table, +On no long bench nor lofty milking shed +As others will, when first they take possession, +But left the house as in his father's time +As though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo, +No settled man. And now that he is gone +There's nothing of him left but half a score +Of sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes. + +GOATHERD + +You have put the thought in rhyme. + +SHEPHERD + + I worked all day +And when 'twas done so little had I done +That maybe 'I am sorry' in plain prose +Had sounded better to your mountain fancy. + +[_He sings._ + +'Like the speckled bird that steers +Thousands of leagues oversea, +And runs for a while or a while half-flies +Upon his yellow legs through our meadows, +He stayed for a while; and we +Had scarcely accustomed our ears +To his speech at the break of day, +Had scarcely accustomed our eyes +To his shape in the lengthening shadows, +Where the sheep are thrown in the pool, +When he vanished from ears and eyes. +I had wished a dear thing on that day +I heard him first, but man is a fool.' + +GOATHERD + +You sing as always of the natural life, +And I that made like music in my youth +Hearing it now have sighed for that young man +And certain lost companions of my own. + +SHEPHERD + +They say that on your barren mountain ridge +You have measured out the road that the soul treads +When it has vanished from our natural eyes; +That you have talked with apparitions. + +GOATHERD + + Indeed +My daily thoughts since the first stupor of youth +Have found the path my goats' feet cannot find. + +SHEPHERD + +Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have plucked +Some medicable herb to make our grief +Less bitter. + +GOATHERD + + They have brought me from that ridge +Seed pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy. + +[_Sings._ + +'He grows younger every second +That were all his birthdays reckoned +Much too solemn seemed; +Because of what he had dreamed, +Or the ambitions that he served, +Much too solemn and reserved. +Jaunting, journeying +To his own dayspring, +He unpacks the loaded pern +Of all 'twas pain or joy to learn, +Of all that he had made. +The outrageous war shall fade; +At some old winding whitethorn root +He'll practice on the shepherd's flute, +Or on the close-cropped grass +Court his shepherd lass, +Or run where lads reform our day-time +Till that is their long shouting play-time; +Knowledge he shall unwind +Through victories of the mind, +Till, clambering at the cradle side, +He dreams himself his mother's pride, +All knowledge lost in trance +Of sweeter ignorance.' + +SHEPHERD + +When I have shut these ewes and this old ram +Into the fold, we'll to the woods and there +Cut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn bark +But put no name and leave them at her door. +To know the mountain and the valley grieve +May be a quiet thought to wife and mother, +And children when they spring up shoulder high. + + + + +LINES WRITTEN IN DEJECTION + + + When have I last looked on + The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies + Of the dark leopards of the moon? + All the wild witches those most noble ladies, + For all their broom-sticks and their tears, + Their angry tears, are gone. + The holy centaurs of the hills are banished; + And I have nothing but harsh sun; + Heroic mother moon has vanished, + And now that I have come to fifty years + I must endure the timid sun. + + + + +THE DAWN + + + I would be ignorant as the dawn + That has looked down + On that old queen measuring a town + With the pin of a brooch, + Or on the withered men that saw + From their pedantic Babylon + The careless planets in their courses, + The stars fade out where the moon comes, + And took their tablets and did sums; + I would be ignorant as the dawn + That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach + Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses; + I would be--for no knowledge is worth a straw-- + Ignorant and wanton as the dawn. + + + + +ON WOMAN + + + May God be praised for woman + That gives up all her mind, + A man may find in no man + A friendship of her kind + That covers all he has brought + As with her flesh and bone, + Nor quarrels with a thought + Because it is not her own. + + Though pedantry denies + It's plain the Bible means + That Solomon grew wise + While talking with his queens. + Yet never could, although + They say he counted grass, + Count all the praises due + When Sheba was his lass, + When she the iron wrought, or + When from the smithy fire + It shuddered in the water: + Harshness of their desire + That made them stretch and yawn, + Pleasure that comes with sleep, + Shudder that made them one. + What else He give or keep + God grant me--no, not here, + For I am not so bold + To hope a thing so dear + Now I am growing old, + But when if the tale's true + The Pestle of the moon + That pounds up all anew + Brings me to birth again-- + To find what once I had + And know what once I have known, + Until I am driven mad, + Sleep driven from my bed, + By tenderness and care, + Pity, an aching head, + Gnashing of teeth, despair; + And all because of some one + Perverse creature of chance, + And live like Solomon + That Sheba led a dance. + + + + +THE FISHERMAN + + + Although I can see him still, + The freckled man who goes + To a grey place on a hill + In grey Connemara clothes + At dawn to cast his flies, + It's long since I began + To call up to the eyes + This wise and simple man. + All day I'd looked in the face + What I had hoped 'twould be + To write for my own race + And the reality; + The living men that I hate, + The dead man that I loved, + The craven man in his seat, + The insolent unreproved, + And no knave brought to book + Who has won a drunken cheer, + The witty man and his joke + Aimed at the commonest ear, + The clever man who cries + The catch-cries of the clown, + The beating down of the wise + And great Art beaten down. + + Maybe a twelvemonth since + Suddenly I began, + In scorn of this audience, + Imagining a man + And his sun-freckled face, + And grey Connemara cloth, + Climbing up to a place + Where stone is dark under froth, + And the down turn of his wrist + When the flies drop in the stream: + A man who does not exist, + A man who is but a dream; + And cried, 'Before I am old + I shall have written him one + Poem maybe as cold + And passionate as the dawn.' + + + + +THE HAWK + + + 'Call down the hawk from the air; + Let him be hooded or caged + Till the yellow eye has grown mild, + For larder and spit are bare, + The old cook enraged, + The scullion gone wild.' + + 'I will not be clapped in a hood, + Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist, + Now I have learnt to be proud + Hovering over the wood + In the broken mist + Or tumbling cloud.' + + 'What tumbling cloud did you cleave, + Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind, + Last evening? that I, who had sat + Dumbfounded before a knave, + Should give to my friend + A pretence of wit.' + + + + +MEMORY + + + One had a lovely face, + And two or three had charm, + But charm and face were in vain + Because the mountain grass + Cannot but keep the form + Where the mountain hare has lain. + + + + +HER PRAISE + + + She is foremost of those that I would hear praised. + I have gone about the house, gone up and down + As a man does who has published a new book + Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown, + And though I have turned the talk by hook or crook + Until her praise should be the uppermost theme, + A woman spoke of some new tale she had read, + A man confusedly in a half dream + As though some other name ran in his head. + She is foremost of those that I would hear praised. + I will talk no more of books or the long war + But walk by the dry thorn until I have found + Some beggar sheltering from the wind, and there + Manage the talk until her name come round. + If there be rags enough he will know her name + And be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days, + Though she had young men's praise and old men's blame, + Among the poor both old and young gave her praise. + + + + +THE PEOPLE + + + 'What have I earned for all that work,' I said, + 'For all that I have done at my own charge? + The daily spite of this unmannerly town, + Where who has served the most is most defamed, + The reputation of his lifetime lost + Between the night and morning. I might have lived, + And you know well how great the longing has been, + Where every day my footfall should have lit + In the green shadow of Ferrara wall; + Or climbed among the images of the past-- + The unperturbed and courtly images-- + Evening and morning, the steep street of Urbino + To where the duchess and her people talked + The stately midnight through until they stood + In their great window looking at the dawn; + I might have had no friend that could not mix + Courtesy and passion into one like those + That saw the wicks grow yellow in the dawn; + I might have used the one substantial right + My trade allows: chosen my company, + And chosen what scenery had pleased me best.' + Thereon my phoenix answered in reproof, + 'The drunkards, pilferers of public funds, + All the dishonest crowd I had driven away, + When my luck changed and they dared meet my face, + Crawled from obscurity, and set upon me + Those I had served and some that I had fed; + Yet never have I, now nor any time, + Complained of the people.' + + All I could reply + Was: 'You, that have not lived in thought but deed, + Can have the purity of a natural force, + But I, whose virtues are the definitions + Of the analytic mind, can neither close + The eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.' + And yet, because my heart leaped at her words, + I was abashed, and now they come to mind + After nine years, I sink my head abashed. + + + + +HIS PHOENIX + + + There is a queen in China, or maybe it's in Spain, + And birthdays and holidays such praises can be heard + Of her unblemished lineaments, a whiteness with no stain, + That she might be that sprightly girl who was trodden by a bird; + And there's a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind, + Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay + And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind: + I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day. + + The young men every night applaud their Gaby's laughing eye, + And Ruth St. Denis had more charm although she had poor luck, + From nineteen hundred nine or ten, Pavlova's had the cry, + And there's a player in the States who gathers up her cloak + And flings herself out of the room when Juliet would be bride + With all a woman's passion, a child's imperious way, + And there are--but no matter if there are scores beside: + I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day. + + There's Margaret and Marjorie and Dorothy and Nan, + A Daphne and a Mary who live in privacy; + One's had her fill of lovers, another's had but one, + Another boasts, 'I pick and choose and have but two or three.' + If head and limb have beauty and the instep's high and light, + They can spread out what sail they please for all I have to say, + Be but the breakers of men's hearts or engines of delight: + I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day. + + There'll be that crowd to make men wild through all the centuries, + And maybe there'll be some young belle walk out to make men wild + Who is my beauty's equal, though that my heart denies, + But not the exact likeness, the simplicity of a child, + And that proud look as though she had gazed into the burning sun, + And all the shapely body no tittle gone astray, + I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet God's will be done, + I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day. + + + + +A THOUGHT FROM PROPERTIUS + + + She might, so noble from head + To great shapely knees, + The long flowing line, + Have walked to the altar + Through the holy images + At Pallas Athene's side, + Or been fit spoil for a centaur + Drunk with the unmixed wine. + + + + +BROKEN DREAMS + + + There is grey in your hair. + Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath + When you are passing; + But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing + Because it was your prayer + Recovered him upon the bed of death. + For your sole sake--that all heart's ache have known, + And given to others all heart's ache, + From meagre girlhood's putting on + Burdensome beauty--for your sole sake + Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom, + So great her portion in that peace you make + By merely walking in a room. + + Your beauty can but leave among us + Vague memories, nothing but memories. + A young man when the old men are done talking + Will say to an old man, 'Tell me of that lady + The poet stubborn with his passion sang us + When age might well have chilled his blood.' + + Vague memories, nothing but memories, + But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed. + The certainty that I shall see that lady + Leaning or standing or walking + In the first loveliness of womanhood, + And with the fervour of my youthful eyes, + Has set me muttering like a fool. + + You are more beautiful than any one + And yet your body had a flaw: + Your small hands were not beautiful, + And I am afraid that you will run + And paddle to the wrist + In that mysterious, always brimming lake + Where those that have obeyed the holy law + Paddle and are perfect; leave unchanged + The hands that I have kissed + For old sakes' sake. + + The last stroke of midnight dies. + All day in the one chair + From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged + In rambling talk with an image of air: + Vague memories, nothing but memories. + + + + +A DEEP-SWORN VOW + + + Others because you did not keep + That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine; + Yet always when I look death in the face, + When I clamber to the heights of sleep, + Or when I grow excited with wine, + Suddenly I meet your face. + + + + +PRESENCES + + + This night has been so strange that it seemed + As if the hair stood up on my head. + From going-down of the sun I have dreamed + That women laughing, or timid or wild, + In rustle of lace or silken stuff, + Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read + All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing + Returned and yet unrequited love. + They stood in the door and stood between + My great wood lecturn and the fire + Till I could hear their hearts beating: + One is a harlot, and one a child + That never looked upon man with desire, + And one it may be a queen. + + + + +THE BALLOON OF THE MIND + + + Hands, do what you're bid; + Bring the balloon of the mind + That bellies and drags in the wind + Into its narrow shed. + + + + +TO A SQUIRREL AT KYLE-NA-GNO + + + Come play with me; + Why should you run + Through the shaking tree + As though I'd a gun + To strike you dead? + When all I would do + Is to scratch your head + And let you go. + + + + +ON BEING ASKED FOR A WAR POEM + + + I think it better that in times like these + A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth + We have no gift to set a statesman right; + He has had enough of meddling who can please + A young girl in the indolence of her youth, + Or an old man upon a winter's night. + + + + +IN MEMORY OF ALFRED POLLEXFEN + + + Five-and-twenty years have gone + Since old William Pollexfen + Laid his strong bones down in death + By his wife Elizabeth + In the grey stone tomb he made. + And after twenty years they laid + In that tomb by him and her, + His son George, the astrologer; + And Masons drove from miles away + To scatter the Acacia spray + Upon a melancholy man + Who had ended where his breath began. + Many a son and daughter lies + Far from the customary skies, + The Mall and Eades's grammar school, + In London or in Liverpool; + But where is laid the sailor John? + That so many lands had known: + Quiet lands or unquiet seas + Where the Indians trade or Japanese. + He never found his rest ashore, + Moping for one voyage more. + Where have they laid the sailor John? + + And yesterday the youngest son, + A humorous, unambitious man, + Was buried near the astrologer; + And are we now in the tenth year? + Since he, who had been contented long, + A nobody in a great throng, + Decided he would journey home, + Now that his fiftieth year had come, + And 'Mr. Alfred' be again + Upon the lips of common men + Who carried in their memory + His childhood and his family. + At all these death-beds women heard + A visionary white sea-bird + Lamenting that a man should die; + And with that cry I have raised my cry. + + + + +UPON A DYING LADY + + +I + +HER COURTESY + + With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace + She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair + Propped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face. + She would not have us sad because she is lying there, + And when she meets our gaze her eyes are laughter-lit, + Her speech a wicked tale that we may vie with her + Matching our broken-hearted wit against her wit, + Thinking of saints and of Petronius Arbiter. + + +II + +CERTAIN ARTISTS BRING HER DOLLS AND DRAWINGS + + Bring where our Beauty lies + A new modelled doll, or drawing, + With a friend's or an enemy's + Features, or maybe showing + Her features when a tress + Of dull red hair was flowing + Over some silken dress + Cut in the Turkish fashion, + Or it may be like a boy's. + We have given the world our passion + We have naught for death but toys. + + +III + +SHE TURNS THE DOLLS' FACES TO THE WALL + + Because to-day is some religious festival + They had a priest say Mass, and even the Japanese, + Heel up and weight on toe, must face the wall + --Pedant in passion, learned in old courtesies, + Vehement and witty she had seemed--; the Venetian lady + Who had seemed to glide to some intrigue in her red shoes, + Her domino, her panniered skirt copied from Longhi; + The meditative critic; all are on their toes, + Even our Beauty with her Turkish trousers on. + Because the priest must have like every dog his day + Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, + We and our dolls being but the world were best away. + + +IV + +THE END OF DAY + + She is playing like a child + And penance is the play, + Fantastical and wild + Because the end of day + Shows her that some one soon + Will come from the house, and say-- + Though play is but half-done-- + 'Come in and leave the play.'-- + + +V + +HER RACE + + She has not grown uncivil + As narrow natures would + And called the pleasures evil + Happier days thought good; + She knows herself a woman + No red and white of a face, + Or rank, raised from a common + Unreckonable race; + And how should her heart fail her + Or sickness break her will + With her dead brother's valour + For an example still. + + +VI + +HER COURAGE + + When her soul flies to the predestined dancing-place + (I have no speech but symbol, the pagan speech I made + Amid the dreams of youth) let her come face to face, + While wondering still to be a shade, with Grania's shade + All but the perils of the woodland flight forgot + That made her Dermuid dear, and some old cardinal + Pacing with half-closed eyelids in a sunny spot + Who had murmured of Giorgione at his latest breath-- + Aye and Achilles, Timor, Babar, Barhaim, all + Who have lived in joy and laughed into the face of Death. + + +VII + +HER FRIENDS BRING HER A CHRISTMAS TREE + + Pardon, great enemy, + Without an angry thought + We've carried in our tree, + And here and there have bought + Till all the boughs are gay, + And she may look from the bed + On pretty things that may + Please a fantastic head. + Give her a little grace, + What if a laughing eye + Have looked into your face-- + It is about to die. + + + + +EGO DOMINUS TUUS + + +HIC + +On the grey sand beside the shallow stream +Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still +A lamp burns on beside the open book +That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon +And though you have passed the best of life still trace +Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion +Magical shapes. + +ILLE + + By the help of an image +I call to my own opposite, summon all +That I have handled least, least looked upon. + +HIC + +And I would find myself and not an image. + +ILLE + +That is our modern hope and by its light +We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind +And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; +Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush +We are but critics, or but half create, +Timid, entangled, empty and abashed +Lacking the countenance of our friends. + +HIC + + And yet +The chief imagination of Christendom +Dante Alighieri so utterly found himself +That he has made that hollow face of his +More plain to the mind's eye than any face +But that of Christ. + +ILLE + + And did he find himself, +Or was the hunger that had made it hollow +A hunger for the apple on the bough +Most out of reach? and is that spectral image +The man that Lapo and that Guido knew? +I think he fashioned from his opposite +An image that might have been a stony face, +Staring upon a bedouin's horse-hair roof +From doored and windowed cliff, or half upturned +Among the coarse grass and the camel dung. +He set his chisel to the hardest stone. +Being mocked by Guido for his lecherous life, +Derided and deriding, driven out +To climb that stair and eat that bitter bread, +He found the unpersuadable justice, he found +The most exalted lady loved by a man. + +HIC + +Yet surely there are men who have made their art +Out of no tragic war, lovers of life, +Impulsive men that look for happiness +And sing when they have found it. + +ILLE + + No, not sing, +For those that love the world serve it in action, +Grow rich, popular and full of influence, +And should they paint or write still it is action: +The struggle of the fly in marmalade. +The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours, +The sentimentalist himself; while art +Is but a vision of reality. +What portion in the world can the artist have +Who has awakened from the common dream +But dissipation and despair? + +HIC + + And yet +No one denies to Keats love of the world; +Remember his deliberate happiness. + +ILLE + +His art is happy but who knows his mind? +I see a schoolboy when I think of him, +With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window, +For certainly he sank into his grave +His senses and his heart unsatisfied, +And made--being poor, ailing and ignorant, +Shut out from all the luxury of the world, +The coarse-bred son of a livery stable-keeper-- +Luxuriant song. + +HIC + + Why should you leave the lamp +Burning alone beside an open book, +And trace these characters upon the sands; +A style is found by sedentary toil +And by the imitation of great masters. + +ILLE + +Because I seek an image, not a book. +Those men that in their writings are most wise +Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts. +I call to the mysterious one who yet +Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream +And look most like me, being indeed my double, +And prove of all imaginable things +The most unlike, being my anti-self, +And standing by these characters disclose +All that I seek; and whisper it as though +He were afraid the birds, who cry aloud +Their momentary cries before it is dawn, +Would carry it away to blasphemous men. + + + + +A PRAYER ON GOING INTO MY HOUSE + + + God grant a blessing on this tower and cottage + And on my heirs, if all remain unspoiled, + No table, or chair or stool not simple enough + For shepherd lads in Galilee; and grant + That I myself for portions of the year + May handle nothing and set eyes on nothing + But what the great and passionate have used + Throughout so many varying centuries. + We take it for the norm; yet should I dream + Sinbad the sailor's brought a painted chest, + Or image, from beyond the Loadstone Mountain + That dream is a norm; and should some limb of the devil + Destroy the view by cutting down an ash + That shades the road, or setting up a cottage + Planned in a government office, shorten his life, + Manacle his soul upon the Red Sea bottom. + + + + +THE PHASES OF THE MOON + + +_An old man cocked his ear upon a bridge; +He and his friend, their faces to the South, +Had trod the uneven road. Their boots were soiled, +Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape; +They had kept a steady pace as though their beds, +Despite a dwindling and late risen moon, +Were distant. An old man cocked his ear._ + +AHERNE + +What made that sound? + +ROBARTES + + A rat or water-hen +Splashed, or an otter slid into the stream. +We are on the bridge; that shadow is the tower, +And the light proves that he is reading still. +He has found, after the manner of his kind, +Mere images; chosen this place to live in +Because, it may be, of the candle light +From the far tower where Milton's platonist +Sat late, or Shelley's visionary prince: +The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved, +An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil; +And now he seeks in book or manuscript +What he shall never find. + +AHERNE + + Why should not you +Who know it all ring at his door, and speak +Just truth enough to show that his whole life +Will scarcely find for him a broken crust +Of all those truths that are your daily bread; +And when you have spoken take the roads again? + +ROBARTES + +He wrote of me in that extravagant style +He had learnt from Pater, and to round his tale +Said I was dead; and dead I chose to be. + +AHERNE + +Sing me the changes of the moon once more; +True song, though speech: 'mine author sung it me.' + +ROBARTES + +Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon, +The full and the moon's dark and all the crescents, +Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty +The cradles that a man must needs be rocked in: +For there's no human life at the full or the dark. +From the first crescent to the half, the dream +But summons to adventure and the man +Is always happy like a bird or a beast; +But while the moon is rounding towards the full +He follows whatever whim's most difficult +Among whims not impossible, and though scarred +As with the cat-o'-nine-tails of the mind, +His body moulded from within his body +Grows comelier. Eleven pass, and then +Athenae takes Achilles by the hair, +Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born, +Because the heroes' crescent is the twelfth. +And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must, +Before the full moon, helpless as a worm. +The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war +In its own being, and when that war's begun +There is no muscle in the arm; and after +Under the frenzy of the fourteenth moon +The soul begins to tremble into stillness, +To die into the labyrinth of itself! + +AHERNE + +Sing out the song; sing to the end, and sing +The strange reward of all that discipline. + +ROBARTES + +All thought becomes an image and the soul +Becomes a body: that body and that soul +Too perfect at the full to lie in a cradle, +Too lonely for the traffic of the world: +Body and soul cast out and cast away +Beyond the visible world. + +AHERNE + + All dreams of the soul +End in a beautiful man's or woman's body. + +ROBARTES + +Have you not always known it? + +AHERNE + + The song will have it +That those that we have loved got their long fingers +From death, and wounds, or on Sinai's top, +Or from some bloody whip in their own hands. +They ran from cradle to cradle till at last +Their beauty dropped out of the loneliness +Of body and soul. + +ROBARTES + + The lovers' heart knows that. + +AHERNE + +It must be that the terror in their eyes +Is memory or foreknowledge of the hour +When all is fed with light and heaven is bare. + +ROBARTES + +When the moon's full those creatures of the full +Are met on the waste hills by country men +Who shudder and hurry by: body and soul +Estranged amid the strangeness of themselves, +Caught up in contemplation, the mind's eye +Fixed upon images that once were thought, +For separate, perfect, and immovable +Images can break the solitude +Of lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes. + +_And thereupon with aged, high-pitched voice +Aherne laughed, thinking of the man within, +His sleepless candle and laborious pen._ + +ROBARTES + +And after that the crumbling of the moon. +The soul remembering its loneliness +Shudders in many cradles; all is changed, +It would be the World's servant, and as it serves, +Choosing whatever task's most difficult +Among tasks not impossible, it takes +Upon the body and upon the soul +The coarseness of the drudge. + +AHERNE + + Before the full +It sought itself and afterwards the world. + +ROBARTES + +Because you are forgotten, half out of life, +And never wrote a book your thought is clear. +Reformer, merchant, statesman, learned man, +Dutiful husband, honest wife by turn, +Cradle upon cradle, and all in flight and all +Deformed because there is no deformity +But saves us from a dream. + +AHERNE + + And what of those +That the last servile crescent has set free? + +ROBARTES + +Because all dark, like those that are all light, +They are cast beyond the verge, and in a cloud, +Crying to one another like the bats; +And having no desire they cannot tell +What's good or bad, or what it is to triumph +At the perfection of one's own obedience; +And yet they speak what's blown into the mind; +Deformed beyond deformity, unformed, +Insipid as the dough before it is baked, +They change their bodies at a word. + +AHERNE + + And then? + +ROBARTES + +When all the dough has been so kneaded up +That it can take what form cook Nature fancy +The first thin crescent is wheeled round once more. + +AHERNE + +But the escape; the song's not finished yet. + +ROBARTES + +Hunchback and saint and fool are the last crescents. +The burning bow that once could shoot an arrow +Out of the up and down, the wagon wheel +Of beauty's cruelty and wisdom's chatter, +Out of that raving tide is drawn betwixt +Deformity of body and of mind. + +AHERNE + +Were not our beds far off I'd ring the bell, +Stand under the rough roof-timbers of the hall +Beside the castle door, where all is stark +Austerity, a place set out for wisdom +That he will never find; I'd play a part; +He would never know me after all these years +But take me for some drunken country man; +I'd stand and mutter there until he caught +'Hunchback and saint and fool,' and that they came +Under the three last crescents of the moon, +And then I'd stagger out. He'd crack his wits +Day after day, yet never find the meaning. + +_And then he laughed to think that what seemed hard +Should be so simple--a bat rose from the hazels +And circled round him with its squeaky cry, +The light in the tower window was put out._ + + + + +THE CAT AND THE MOON + + + The cat went here and there + And the moon spun round like a top, + And the nearest kin of the moon + The creeping cat looked up. + Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon, + For wander and wail as he would + The pure cold light in the sky + Troubled his animal blood. + Minnaloushe runs in the grass, + Lifting his delicate feet. + Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance? + When two close kindred meet + What better than call a dance, + Maybe the moon may learn, + Tired of that courtly fashion, + A new dance turn. + Minnaloushe creeps through the grass + From moonlit place to place, + The sacred moon overhead + Has taken a new phase. + Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils + Will pass from change to change, + And that from round to crescent, + From crescent to round they range? + Minnaloushe creeps through the grass + Alone, important and wise, + And lifts to the changing moon + His changing eyes. + + + + +THE SAINT AND THE HUNCHBACK + + +HUNCHBACK + +Stand up and lift your hand and bless +A man that finds great bitterness +In thinking of his lost renown. +A Roman Caesar is held down +Under this hump. + +SAINT + + God tries each man +According to a different plan. +I shall not cease to bless because +I lay about me with the taws +That night and morning I may thrash +Greek Alexander from my flesh, +Augustus Caesar, and after these +That great rogue Alcibiades. + +HUNCHBACK + +To all that in your flesh have stood +And blessed, I give my gratitude, +Honoured by all in their degrees, +But most to Alcibiades. + + + + +TWO SONGS OF A FOOL + + +I + + A speckled cat and a tame hare + Eat at my hearthstone + And sleep there; + And both look up to me alone + For learning and defence + As I look up to Providence. + + I start out of my sleep to think + Some day I may forget + Their food and drink; + Or, the house door left unshut, + The hare may run till it's found + The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound. + + I bear a burden that might well try + Men that do all by rule, + And what can I + That am a wandering witted fool + But pray to God that He ease + My great responsibilities. + + +II + + I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire, + The speckled cat slept on my knee; + We never thought to enquire + Where the brown hare might be, + And whether the door were shut. + Who knows how she drank the wind + Stretched up on two legs from the mat, + Before she had settled her mind + To drum with her heel and to leap: + Had I but awakened from sleep + And called her name she had heard, + It may be, and had not stirred, + That now, it may be, has found + The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound. + + + + +ANOTHER SONG OF A FOOL + + + This great purple butterfly, + In the prison of my hands, + Has a learning in his eye + Not a poor fool understands. + + Once he lived a schoolmaster + With a stark, denying look, + A string of scholars went in fear + Of his great birch and his great book. + + Like the clangour of a bell, + Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet, + That is how he learnt so well + To take the roses for his meat. + + + + +THE DOUBLE VISION OF MICHAEL ROBARTES + + +I + + On the grey rock of Cashel the mind's eye + Has called up the cold spirits that are born + When the old moon is vanished from the sky + And the new still hides her horn. + + Under blank eyes and fingers never still + The particular is pounded till it is man, + When had I my own will? + Oh, not since life began. + + Constrained, arraigned, baffled, bent and unbent + By these wire-jointed jaws and limbs of wood, + Themselves obedient, + Knowing not evil and good; + + Obedient to some hidden magical breath. + They do not even feel, so abstract are they, + So dead beyond our death, + Triumph that we obey. + + +II + + On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw + A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw, + A Buddha, hand at rest, + Hand lifted up that blest; + + And right between these two a girl at play + That it may be had danced her life away, + For now being dead it seemed + That she of dancing dreamed. + + Although I saw it all in the mind's eye + There can be nothing solider till I die; + I saw by the moon's light + Now at its fifteenth night. + + One lashed her tail; her eyes lit by the moon + Gazed upon all things known, all things unknown, + In triumph of intellect + With motionless head erect. + + That other's moonlit eyeballs never moved, + Being fixed on all things loved, all things unloved, + Yet little peace he had + For those that love are sad. + + Oh, little did they care who danced between, + And little she by whom her dance was seen + So that she danced. No thought, + Body perfection brought, + + For what but eye and ear silence the mind + With the minute particulars of mankind? + Mind moved yet seemed to stop + As 'twere a spinning-top. + + In contemplation had those three so wrought + Upon a moment, and so stretched it out + That they, time overthrown, + Were dead yet flesh and bone. + + +III + + I knew that I had seen, had seen at last + That girl my unremembering nights hold fast + Or else my dreams that fly, + If I should rub an eye, + + And yet in flying fling into my meat + A crazy juice that makes the pulses beat + As though I had been undone + By Homer's Paragon + + Who never gave the burning town a thought; + To such a pitch of folly I am brought, + Being caught between the pull + Of the dark moon and the full, + + The commonness of thought and images + That have the frenzy of our Western seas. + Thereon I made my moan, + And after kissed a stone, + + And after that arranged it in a song + Seeing that I, ignorant for so long, + Had been rewarded thus + In Cormac's ruined house. + + + + +NOTE + + +"_Unpack the loaded pern_," p. 36. + +When I was a child at Sligo I could see above my grandfather's trees a +little column of smoke from "the pern mill," and was told that "pern" +was another name for the spool, as I was accustomed to call it, on which +thread was wound. One could not see the chimney for the trees, and the +smoke looked as if it came from the mountain, and one day a foreign +sea-captain asked me if that was a burning mountain. + +W. B. Y. + +Printed in the United States of America. + + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Note | + | | + | Page 64: "lecturn" _sic_--alternative spelling confirmed. | + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Swans at Coole, by +William Butler (W.B.) 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