Poems by William Butler YeatsHERE at right of the entrance this bronze head,
Human, superhuman, a bird's round eye,
Everything else withered and mummy-dead.
I MADE my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But he fools caught it,
THE angels are stooping
Above your bed;
They weary of trooping
With the whimpering dead.
God's laughing in Heaven
THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,
Her soul in division from itself
OTHERS because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
i{My Soul} I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
The deck of an ancient ship.At the right of the stage is the mast, with a large square sail hiding a great deal of the sky an
I DREAMED that one had died in a strange place
Near no accustomed hand,
And they had nailed the boards above her face,
WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
COME swish around, my pretty punk,
And keep me dancing still
That I may stay a sober man
Although I drink my fill.
ARGUMENT.Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the
Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land
BEAUTIFUL lofty things:O'Leary's noble head;
My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd:
If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
'TIME to put off the world and go somewhere
And find my health again in the sea air,'
BLESSED be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
A bloody, arrogant power
Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
THERE is grey in your hair.
Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath
When you are passing;
THE unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
The lot of love is chosen.I learnt that much
Struggling for an image on the track
Of the whirling Zodiac.
HERE is fresh matter, poet,
Matter for old age meet;
Might of the Church and the State,
Their mobs put under their feet.
THE Colonel went out sailing,
He spoke with Turk and Jew,
With Christian and with Infidel,
For all tongues he knew.
Chorus. Come praise Colonus' horses, and come praise
The wine-dark of the wood's intricacies,
COME gather round me, Parnellites,
And praise our chosen man;
Stand upright on your legs awhile,
Stand upright while you can,
O but there is wisdom
In what the sages said;
But stretch that body for a while
And lay down that head
Under my window-ledge the waters race,
Otters below and moor-hens on the top,
Run for a mile undimmed in Heaven's face
I meditate upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
I know, although when looks meet
I tremble to the bone,
The more I leave the door unlatched
The sooner love is gone,
Bring me to the blasted oak
That I, midnight upon the stroke,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
May call down curses on his head
NOR dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
FOR certain minutes at the least
That crafty demon and that loud beast
That plague me day and night
Ran out of my sight;
DOWN by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
Hic. On the grey sand beside the shallow stream
Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still
'YOUR eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sotrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning.'
Sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania, in their bridal sleep under a Cromlech.
We who are old, old and gay,
Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,
And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone,
She hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
Fergus. This whole day have I followed in the rocks,
And you have changed and flowed from shape to shape,
'NEVER shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
HIS DREAM
I SWAYED upon the gaudy stem
The butt-end of a steering-oar,
And saw wherever I could turn
A crowd upon a shore.
I
LOCKE sank into a swoon;
The Garden died;
God took the spinning-jenny
Out of his side.
II
Where got I that truth?
NOW must I these three praise --
Three women that have wrought
What joy is in my days:
One because no thought,
PARNELL'S FUNERAL
UNDER the Great Comedian's tomb the crowd.
A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown
I went out alone
To sing a song or two,
My fancy on a man,
And you know who.
Another came in sight
That on a stick relied
WHAT they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass.
I HEAR the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,
Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white;
FASTEN your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress;
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
I WANDER by the edge
Of this desolate lake
Where wind cries in the sedge:
Until the axle break
DO you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns?
I have been changed to a hound with one red ear;
When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
O CURLEW, cry no more in the air,
Or only to the water in the West;
Because your crying brings to my mind
I DREAMED that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,
For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;
O CLOUD-PALE eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
I HAVE drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung
HALF close your eyelids, loosen your hair,
And dream about the great and their pride;
They have spoken against you everywhere,
'I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,' cried she.
'Come out of charity,
A MOST astonishing thing --
Seventy years have I lived;
(Hurrah for the flowers of Spring,
For Spring is here again.)
FIVE-AND-TWENTY years have gone
Since old William pollexfen
Laid his strong bones down in death
By his wife Elizabeth
The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
Now that we're almost settled in our house
I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us
A MAN I praise that once in Tara's Hals
Said to the woman on his knees, 'Lie still.
My hundredth year is at an end.I think
I HAVE heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods
Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees
OUT-WORN heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
I walked among the seven woods of Coole:
Shan-walla, where a willow-hordered pond
Gathers the wild duck from the winter dawn;
A BLOODY and a sudden end,
Gunshot or a noose,
For Death who takes what man would keep,
Leaves what man would lose.
I
A bloody and a sudden end,
Gunshot or a noose,
For Death who takes what man would keep,
Leaves what man would lose.
(For Harry Clifton)
I HAVE heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
A SUDDEN blow:the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
WHEN have I last looked on
The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon?
THAT civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post;
My love, we will go, we will go, I and you,
And away in the woods we will scatter the dew;
Old fathers, great-grandfathers,
Rise as kindred should.
If ever lover's loneliness
Came where you stood,
Beloved, may your sleep be sound
That have found it where you fed.
What were all the world's alarms
Bolt and bar the shutter,
For the foul winds blow:
Our minds are at their best this night,
And I seem to know
WHERE has Maid Quiet gone to,
Nodding her russet hood?
The winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood.
Man. In a cleft that's christened Alt
Under broken stone I halt
At the bottom of a pit
That broad noon has never lit,
WHAT'S riches to him
That has made a great peacock
With the pride of his eye?
The wind-beaten, stone-grey,
I
Ancestral Houses
SURELY among a rich man s flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Hidden by old age awhile
In masker's cloak and hood,
Each hating what the other loved,
Face to face we stood:
ONE had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
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
He. Opinion is not worth a rush;
In this altar-piece the knight,
Who grips his long spear so to push
I ASKED if I should pray.
But the Brahmin said,
'pray for nothing, say
Every night in bed,
'I have been a king,
BOOK I
S.Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind,
With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,
NEVER give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
THERE all the golden codgers lay,
There the silver dew,
And the great water sighed for love,
And the wind sighed too.
MANY ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
protected from the circle of the moon
WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
SWEETHEART, do not love too long:
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.
IN tombs of gold and lapis lazuli
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.
O THOUGHT, fly to her when the end of day
Awakens an old memory, and say,
'Your strength, that is so lofty and fierce and kind,
Things out of perfection sail,
And all their swelling canvas wear,
Nor shall the self-begotten fail
YOUR hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
SHE that but little patience knew,
From childhood on, had now so much
A grey gull lost its fear and flew
I THINK it better that in times like these
A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
Where, where but here have pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
WHERE, where but here have pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
ONCE, when midnight smote the air,
Eunuchs ran through Hell and met
On every crowded street to stare
Upon great Juan riding by:
William Butler Yeat
I
Under the Great Comedian's tomb the crowd.
A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown
He. Dear, I must be gone
While night Shuts the eyes
Of the household spies;
That song announces dawn.
INDIGNANT at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite
Of our old paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind
AH, that Time could touch a form
That could show what Homer's age
Bred to be a hero's wage.
'Were not all her life but storm
HOW can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
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
WHERE had her sweetness gone?
What fanatics invent
In this blind bitter town,
Fantasy or incident
Not worth thinking of,
SOME may have blamed you that you took away
The verses that could move them on the day
THE old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand,
Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand;
I RANTED to the knave and fool,
But outgrew that school,
Would transform the part,
Fit audience found, but cannot rule
While I, that reed-throated whisperer
Who comes at need, although not now as once
A clear articulation in the air,
Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain
Somewhere in ear-shot for the story's end,
As I came over Windy Gap
They threw a halfpenny into my cap.
For I am running to paradise;
And all that I need do is to wish
I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
WHAT need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
On Cruachan's plain slept he
That must sing in a rhyme
What most could shake his soul:
'The stallion Eternity
'THOUGH logic-choppers rule the town,
And every man and maid and boy
Has marked a distant object down,
Sang old Tom the lunatic
That sleeps under the canopy:
'What change has put my thoughts astray
WAS it the double of my dream
The woman that by me lay
Dreamed, or did we halve a dream
Under the first cold gleam of day?
I
I saw a staring virgin stand
Where holy Dionysus died,
And tear the heart out of his side.
And lay the heart upon her hand
I
A speckled cat and a tame hare
Eat at my hearthstone
And seep there;
And both look up to me alone
For learning and defence
I
My Paistin Finn is my sole desire,
And I am shrunken to skin and bone,
For all my heart has had for its hire
HAS no one said those daring
Kind eyes should be more learn'd?
Or warned you how despairing
The moths are when they are burned?
I
SWEAR by what the sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.
DO not because this day I have grown saturnine
Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought
I HAVE no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde,
Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle,
'ALTHOUGH I'd lie lapped up in linen
A deal I'd sweat and little earn
If I should live as live the neighbours,'
I
Her Courtesy
WITH the old kindness, the old distinguished grace,
She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair
HOW should the world be luckier if this house,
Where passion and precision have been one
Time out of mind, became too ruinous
I
BETWEEN extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath.
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night;
THE Heavenly Circuit; Berenice's Hair;
Tent-pole of Eden; the tent's drapery;
Symbolical glory of thc earth and air!
HIS chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
I SING what was lost and dread what was won,
I walk in a battle fought over again,
WE have cried in our despair
That men desert,
For some trivial affair
Or noisy, insolent sport,
Beauty that we have won
WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
WHO will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
WHY should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
THE true faith discovered was
When painted panel, statuary.
Glass-mosaic, window-glass,
Amended what was told awry
I HAD this thought a while ago,
'My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land.'
I - CRAZY JANE AND THE BISHOP
BRING me to the blasted oak
That I, midnight upon the stroke,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
'She will change,' I cried.
'Into a withered crone.'
The heart in my side,
That so still had lain,
In noble rage replied
MUCH did I rage when young,
Being by the world oppressed,
But now with flattering tongue
It speeds the parting guest.
