THE SONG OF THE HAPPY SHEPHERD THE woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy; Yet still she turns her restless head: But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good. Where are now the warring kings, Word be-mockers? — By the Rood, Where are now the watring kings? An idle word is now their glory, By the stammering schoolboy said, Reading some entangled story: The kings of the old time are dead; The wandering earth herself may be Only a sudden flaming word, In clanging space a moment heard, Troubling the endless reverie. Then nowise worship dusty deeds, Nor seek, for this is also sooth, To hunger fiercely after truth, Lest all thy toiling only breeds New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth Saving in thine own heart. Seek, then, No learning from the starry men, Who follow with the optic glass The whirling ways of stars that pass — Seek, then, for this is also sooth, No word of theirs — the cold star-bane Has cloven and rent their hearts in twain, And dead is all their human truth. Go gather by the humming sea Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell. And to its lips thy story tell, And they thy comforters will be. Rewording in melodious guile Thy fretful words a little while, Till they shall singing fade in ruth And die a pearly brotherhood; For words alone are certain good: Sing, then, for this is also sooth. I must be gone: there is a grave Where daffodil and lily wave, And I would please the hapless faun, Buried under the sleepy ground, With mirthful songs before the dawn. His shouting days with mirth were crowned; And still I dream he treads the lawn, Walking ghostly in the dew, Pierced by my glad singing through, My songs of old earth's dreamy youth: But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou! For fair are poppies on the brow: Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.

THE SAD SHEPHERD THERE was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend, And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming, Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming And humming Sands, where windy surges wend: And he called loudly to the stars to bend From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they Among themselves laugh on and sing alway: And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend Cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story.! The sea Swept on and cried her old cry still, Rolling along in dreams from hill to hill. He fled the persecution of her glory And, in a far-off, gentle valley stopping, Cried all his story to the dewdrops glistening. But naught they heard, for they are always listening, The dewdrops, for the sound of their own dropping. And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend Sought once again the shore, and found a shell, And thought, I will my heavy story tell Till my own words, re-echoing, shall send Their sadness through a hollow, pearly heart; And my own talc again for me shall sing, And my own whispering words be comforting, And lo! my ancient burden may depart. Then he sang softly nigh the pearly rim; But the sad dweller by the sea-ways lone Changed all he sang to inarticulate moan Among her wildering whirls, forgetting him.

THE CLOAK, THE BOAT, AND THE SHOES "WHAT do you make so fair and bright?' "I make the cloak of Sorrow: O lovely to see in all men's sight Shall be the cloak of Sorrow, In all men's sight.' "What do you build with sails for flight?' "I build a boat for Sorrow: O swift on the seas all day and night Saileth the rover Sorrow, All day and night.' What do you weave with wool so white?' "I weave the shoes of Sorrow: Soundless shall be the footfall light In all men's ears of Sorrow, Sudden and light.'

ANASHUYA AND VIJAYA A little Indian temple in the Golden Age. Around it a garden; around that the forest. Anashuya, the young priestess, kneelinq within the temple. Anashuya. Send peace on all the lands and flickering corn. — O, may tranquillity walk by his elbow When wandering in the forest, if he love No other. — Hear, and may the indolent flocks Be plentiful. — And if he love another, May panthers end him. — Hear, and load our king With wisdom hour by hour. — May we two stand, When we are dead, beyond the setting suns, A little from the other shades apart, With mingling hair, and play upon one lute. Vijaya [entering and throwing a lily at her]. Hail! hail, my Anashuya. Anashuya. No: be still. I, priestess of this temple, offer up prayers for the land. Vijaya. I will wait here, Amrita. Anashuya. By mighty Brahma's ever-rustling robe, Who is Amrita? Sorrow of all sorrows! Another fills your mind. Vijaya. My mother's name. Anashuya [sings, coming out of the temple]. A sad, sad thought went by me slowly: Sigh, O you little stars.! O sigh and shake your blue apparel.! The sad, sad thought has gone from me now wholly: Sing, O you little stars.! O sing and raise your rapturous carol To mighty Brahma, be who made you many as the sands, And laid you on the gates of evening with his quiet hands. (Sits down on the steps of the temple.j Vijaya, I have brought my evening rice; The sun has laid his chin on the grey wood, Weary, with all his poppies gathered round him. Vijaya. The hour when Kama, full of sleepy laughter, Rises, and showers abroad his fragrant arrows, Piercing the twilight with their murmuring barbs. Anashuya. See-how the sacred old flamingoes come. Painting with shadow all the marble steps: Aged and wise, they seek their wonted perches Within the temple, devious walking, made To wander by their melancholy minds. Yon tall one eyes my supper; chase him away, Far, far away. I named him after you. He is a famous fisher; hour by hour He ruffles with his bill the minnowed streams. Ah! there he snaps my rice. I told you so. Now cuff him off. He's off! A kiss for you, Because you saved my rice. Have you no thanks? Vijaya [sings]. Sing you of her, O first few stars, Whom Brahma, touching with his finger, praises, for you hold The van of wandering quiet; ere you be too calm and old, Sing, turning in your cars, Sing, till you raise your hands and sigh, and from your car- heads peer, With all your whirling hair, and drop many an azure tear. Anashuya. What know the pilots of the stars of tears? Vijaya. Their faces are all worn, and in their eyes Flashes the fire of sadness, for they see The icicles that famish all the North, Where men lie frozen in the glimmering snow; And in the flaming forests cower the lion And lioness, with all their whimpering cubs; And, ever pacing on the verge of things, The phantom, Beauty, in a mist of tears; While we alone have round us woven woods, And feel the softness of each other's hand, Amrita, while — - Anashuya [going away from him]. Ah me! you love another, [Bursting into tears.] And may some sudden dreadful ill befall her! Vijaya. I loved another; now I love no other. Among the mouldering of ancient woods You live, and on the village border she, With her old father the blind wood-cutter; I saw her standing in her door but now. Anashuya. Vijaya, swear to love her never more. Vijaya. Ay, ay. Anashuya. Swear by the parents of the gods, Dread oath, who dwell on sacred Himalay, On the far Golden peak; enormous shapes, Who still were old when the great sea was young; On their vast faces mystery and dreams; Their hair along the mountains rolled and filled From year to year by the unnumbered nests Of aweless birds, and round their stirless feet The joyous flocks of deer and antelope, Who never hear the unforgiving hound. Swear! Vijaya. By the parents of the gods, I swear. Anashuya [sings]. I have forgiven, O new star! Maybe you have not heard of us, you have come forth so newly, You hunter of the fields afar! Ah, you will know my loved one by his hunter's arrows truly, Shoot on him shafts of quietness, that he may ever keep A lonely laughter, and may kiss his hands to me in sleep. Farewell, Vijaya. Nay, no word, no word; I, priestess of this temple, offer up Prayers for the land. [Vijaya goes.] O Brahma, guard in sleep The merry lambs and the complacent kine, The flies below the leaves, and the young mice In the tree roots, and all the sacred flocks Of red flamingoes; and my love, Vijaya; And may no restless fay with fidget finger Trouble his sleeping: give him dreams of me.

THE INDIAN UPON GOD I PASSED along the water's edge below the humid trees, My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees, My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moor- fowl pace All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak: Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky. The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye. I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk: Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk, For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide. A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies, He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me? I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say: Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay, He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

THE INDIAN TO HIS LOVE THE island dreams under the dawn And great boughs drop tranquillity; The peahens dance on a smooth lawn, A parrot sways upon a tree, Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea. Here we will moor our lonely ship And wander ever with woven hands, Murmuring softly lip to lip, Along the grass, along the sands, Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands: How we alone of mortals are Hid under quiet boughs apart, While our love grows an Indian star, A meteor of the burning heart, One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam and dart, The heavy boughs, the burnished dove That moans and sighs a hundred days: How when we die our shades will rove, When eve has hushed the feathered ways, With vapoury footsole by the water's drowsy blaze.

THE FALLING OF THE LEAVES AUTUMN is over the long leaves that love us, And over the mice in the barley sheaves; Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us, And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves. The hour of the waning of love has beset us, And weary and worn are our sad souls now; Let us patt, ere the season of passion forget us, With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

EPHEMERA "YOUR eyes that once were never weary of mine Are bowed in sotrow under pendulous lids, Because our love is waning.' And then She: "Although our love is waning, let us stand By the lone border of the lake once more, Together in that hour of gentleness When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep. How far away the stars seem, and how far Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!' Pensive they paced along the faded leaves, While slowly he whose hand held hers replied: "Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.' The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once A rabbit old and lame limped down the path; Autumn was over him: and now they stood On the lone border of the lake once more: Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes, In bosom and hair. "Ah, do not mourn,' he said, "That we are tired, for other loves await us; Hate on and love through unrepining hours. Before us lies eternity; our souls Are love, and a continual farewell.'

THE MADNESS OF KING GOLL I SAT on cushioned otter-skin: My word was law from Ith to Emain, And shook at Inver Amergin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away From girl and boy and man and beast; The fields grew fatter day by day, The wild fowl of the air increased; And every ancient Ollave said, While he bent down his fading head. "He drives away the Northern cold.' They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old. I sat and mused and drank sweet wine; A herdsman came from inland valleys, Crying, the pirates drove his swine To fill their dark-beaked hollow galleys. I called my battle-breaking men And my loud brazen battle-cars From rolling vale and rivery glen; And under the blinking of the stars Fell on the pirates by the deep, And hurled them in the gulph of sleep: These hands won many a torque of gold. They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old. But slowly, as I shouting slew And trampled in the bubbling mire, In my most secret spirit grew A whirling and a wandering fire: I stood: keen stars above me shone, Around me shone keen eyes of men: I laughed aloud and hurried on By rocky shore and rushy fen; I laughed because birds fluttered by, And starlight gleamed, and clouds flew high, And rushes waved and waters rolled. They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old. And now I wander in the woods When summer gluts the golden bees, Or in autumnal solitudes Arise the leopard-coloured trees; Or when along the wintry strands The cormorants shiver on their rocks; I wander on, and wave my hands, And sing, and shake my heavy locks. The grey wolf knows me; by one ear I lead along the woodland deer; The hares run by me growing bold. They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the Beech leaves old. I came upon a little town That slumbered in the harvest moon, And passed a-tiptoe up and down, Murmuring, to a fitful tune, How I have followed, night and day, A tramping of tremendous feet, And saw where this old tympan lay Deserted on a doorway seat, And bore it to the woods with me; Of some inhuman misery Our married voices wildly trolled. They will not hush, ta leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old. I sang how, when day's toil is done, Orchil shakes out her long dark hair That hides away the dying sun And sheds faint odours through the air: When my hand passed from wire to wire It quenched, with sound like falling dew The whirling and the wandering fire; But lift a mournful ulalu, For the kind wires are torn and still, And I must wander wood and hill Through summer's heat and winter's cold. They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.

THE STOLEN CHILD WHERE dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water-rats; There we've hid our faery vats, Full of berries And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With afacry, hand in hand, For the world's morefull of weeping than you can understand. Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim grey sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And is anxious in its sleep. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's morefully of weeping than you can understand. Where the wandering water gushes From the hills above Glen-Car, . In pools among the rushes That scarce could bathe a star, We seek for slumbering trout And whispering in their ears Give them unquiet dreams; Leaning softly out From ferns that drop their tears Over the young streams. Come away, O human child! To to waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For to world's morefully of weeping than you can understand. Away with us he's going, The solemn-eyed: He'll hear no more the lowing Of the calves on the warm hillside Or the kettle on the hob Sing peace into his breast, Or see the brown mice bob Round and round the oatmeal-chest. For he comes, the human child, To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, from a world more full of weeping than you can understand.

TO AN ISLE IN THE WATER SHY one, Shy one, Shy one of my heart, She moves in the firelight pensively apart. She carries in the dishes, And lays them in a row. To an isle in the water With her would I go. With catries in the candles, And lights the curtained room, Shy in the doorway And shy in the gloom; And shy as a rabbit, Helpful and shy. To an isle in the water With her would I fly.

DOWN BY THE SALLEY GARDENS DOWN by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

THE MEDITATION OF THE OLD FISHERMAN YOU waves, though you dance by my feet like children at play, Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and you dart; In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves were more gay, When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart. The herring are not in the tides as they were of old; My sorrow! for many a creak gave the creel in the-cart That carried the take to Sligo town to be sold, When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart. And ah, you proud maiden, you are not so fair when his oar Is heard on the water, as they were, the proud and apart, Who paced in the eve by the nets on the pebbly shore, When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.

THE BALLAD OF FATHER O'HART GOOD Father John O'Hart In penal days rode out To a Shoneen who had free lands And his own snipe and trout. In trust took he John's lands; Sleiveens were all his race; And he gave them as dowers to his daughters. And they married beyond their place. But Father John went up, And Father John went down; And he wore small holes in his Shoes, And he wore large holes in his gown. All loved him, only the shoneen, Whom the devils have by the hair, From the wives, and the cats, and the children, To the birds in the white of the air. The birds, for he opened their cages As he went up and down; And he said with a smile, "Have peace now'; And he went his way with a frown. But if when anyone died Came keeners hoarser than rooks, He bade them give over their keening; For he was a man of books. And these were the works of John, When, weeping score by score, People came into Colooney; For he'd died at ninety-four. There was no human keening; The birds from Knocknarea And the world round Knocknashee Came keening in that day. The young birds and old birds Came flying, heavy and sad; Keening in from Tiraragh, Keening from Ballinafad; Keening from Inishmurray. Nor stayed for bite or sup; This way were all reproved Who dig old customs up.

THE BALLAD OF MOLL MAGEE COME round me, little childer; There, don't fling stones at me Because I mutter as I go; But pity Moll Magee. My man was a poor fisher With shore lines in the say; My work was saltin' herrings The whole of the long day. And sometimes from the Saltin' shed I scarce could drag my feet, Under the blessed moonlight, Along thc pebbly street. I'd always been but weakly, And my baby was just born; A neighbour minded her by day, I minded her till morn. I lay upon my baby; Ye little childer dear, I looked on my cold baby When the morn grew frosty and clear. A weary woman sleeps so hard! My man grew red and pale, And gave me money, and bade me go To my own place, Kinsale. He drove me out and shut the door. And gave his curse to me; I went away in silence, No neighbour could I see. The windows and the doors were shut, One star shone faint and green, The little straws were turnin round Across the bare boreen. I went away in silence: Beyond old Martin's byre I saw a kindly neighbour Blowin' her mornin' fire. She drew from me my story — My money's all used up, And still, with pityin', scornin' eye, She gives me bite and sup. She says my man will surely come And fetch me home agin; But always, as I'm movin' round, Without doors or within, Pilin' the wood or pilin' the turf, Or goin' to the well, I'm thinkin' of my baby And keenin' to mysel'. And Sometimes I am sure she knows When, openin' wide His door, God lights the stats, His candles, And looks upon the poor. So now, ye little childer, Ye won't fling stones at me; But gather with your shinin' looks And pity Moll Magee.

THE BALLAD OF THE FOXHUNTER "LAY me in a cushioned chair; Carry me, ye four, With cushions here and cushions there, To see the world once more. "To stable and to kennel go; Bring what is there to bring; Lead my Lollard to and fro, Or gently in a ring. "put the chair upon the grass: Bring Rody and his hounds, That I may contented pass From these earthly bounds.' His eyelids droop, his head falls low, His old eyes cloud with dreams; The sun upon all things that grow Falls in sleepy streams. Brown Lollard treads upon the lawn, And to the armchair goes, And now the old man's dreams are gone, He smooths the long brown nose. And now moves many a pleasant tongue Upon his wasted hands, For leading aged hounds and young The huntsman near him stands. "Huntsman Rody, blow the horn, Make the hills reply.' The huntsman loosens on the morn A gay wandering cry. Fire is in the old man's eyes, His fingers move and sway, And when the wandering music dies They hear him feebly say, "Huntsman Rody, blow the horn, Make the hills reply.' "I cannot blow upon my horn, I can but weep and sigh.' Setvants round his cushioned place Are with new sorrow wrung; Hounds are gazing on his face, Aged hounds and young. One blind hound only lies apart On the sun-smitten grass; He holds deep commune with his heart: The moments pass and pass; The blind hound with a mournful din Lifts slow his wintry head; The servants bear the body in; The hounds wail for the dead.

TO THE ROSE UPON THE ROOD OF TIME Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide; The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed, Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold; And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea, Sing in their high and lonely melody. Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate, I find under the boughs of love and hate, In all poor foolish things that live a day, Eternal beauty wandering on her way. Come near, come near, come near — Ah, leave me still A little space for the rose-breath to fill! Lest I no more bear common things that crave; The weak worm hiding down in its small cave, The field-mouse running by me in the grass, And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass; But seek alone to hear the strange things said By God to the bright hearts of those long dead, And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know. Come near; I would, before my time to go, Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways: Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.

FERGUS AND THE DRUID Fergus: This whole day have I followed in the rocks, And you have changed and flowed from shape to shape, First as a raven on whose ancient wings Scarcely a feather lingered, then you seemed A weasel moving on from stone to stone, And now at last you wear a human shape, A thin grey man half lost in gathering night. Druid: What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings? Fergus: This would I Say, most wise of living souls: Young subtle Conchubar sat close by me When I gave judgment, and his words were wise, And what to me was burden without end, To him seemed easy, So I laid the crown Upon his head to cast away my sorrow. Druid: What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings? Fergus: A king and proud! and that is my despair. I feast amid my people on the hill, And pace the woods, and drive my chariot-wheels In the white border of the murmuring sea; And still I feel the crown upon my head Druid: What would you, Fergus? Fergus: Be no more a king But learn the dreaming wisdom that is yours. Druid: Look on my thin grey hair and hollow cheeks And on these hands that may not lift the sword, This body trembling like a wind-blown reed. No woman's loved me, no man sought my help. Fergus: A king is but a foolish labourer Who wastes his blood to be another's dream. Druid: Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams; Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round. Fergus: I See my life go drifting like a river From change to change; I have been many things — A green drop in the surge, a gleam of light Upon a sword, a fir-tree on a hill, An old slave grinding at a heavy quern, A king sitting upon a chair of gold — And all these things were wonderful and great; But now I have grown nothing, knowing all. Ah! Druid, Druid, how great webs of sorrow Lay hidden in the small slate-coloured thing!

CUCHULAIN'S FIGHT WITH THE SEA A MAN came slowly from the setting sun, To Emer, raddling raiment in her dun, And said, `I am that swineherd whom you bid Go watch the road between the wood and tide, But now I have no need to watch it more.' Then Emer cast the web upon the floor, And raising arms all raddled with the dye, Parted her lips with a loud sudden cry. That swineherd stared upon her face and said, `No man alive, no man among the dead, Has won the gold his cars of battle bring.' `But if your master comes home triumphing Why must you blench and shake from foot to crown?' Thereon he shook the more and cast him down Upon the web-heaped floor, and cried his word: `With him is one sweet-throated like a bird.' `You dare me to my face,' and thereupon She smote with raddled fist, and where her son Herded the cattle came with stumbling feet, And cried with angry voice, 'It is not meet To idle life away, a common herd.' `I have long waited, mother, for that word: But wherefore now?' 'There is a man to die; You have the heaviest arm under the sky.' `Whether under its daylight or its stars My father stands amid his battle-cars.' `But you have grown to be the taller man.' `Yet somewhere under starlight or the sun My father stands.' `Aged, worn out with wars On foot, on horseback or in battle-cars.' `I only ask what way my journey lies, For He who made you bitter made you wise.' `The Red Branch camp in a great company Between wood's rim and the horses of the sea. Go there, and light a camp-fire at wood's rim; But tell your name and lineage to him Whose blade compels, and wait till they have found Some feasting man that the same oath has bound.' Among those feasting men Cuchulain dwelt, And his young sweetheart close beside him knelt, Stared on the mournful wonder of his eyes, Even as Spring upon the ancient skies, And pondered on the glory of his days; And all around the harp-string told his praise, And Conchubar, the Red Branch king of kings, With his own fingers touched the brazen strings. At last Cuchulain spake, `Some man has made His evening fire amid the leafy shade. I have often heard him singing to and fro, I have often heard the sweet sound of his bow. Seek out what man he is.' One went and came. `He bade me let all know he gives his name At the sword-point, and waits till we have found Some feasting man that the same oath has bound.' Cuchulain cried, `I am the only man Of all this host so bound from childhood on. After short fighting in the leafy shade, He spake to the young man, 'Is there no maid Who loves you, no white arms to wrap you round, Or do you long for the dim sleepy ground, That you have come and dared me to my face?' `The dooms of men are in God's hidden place,' `Your head a while seemed like a woman's head That I loved once.' Again the fighting sped, But now the war-rage in Cuchulain woke, And through that new blade's guard the old blade broke, And pierced him. `Speak before your breath is done.' `Cuchulain I, mighty Cuchulain's son.' `I put you from your pain. I can no more.' While day its burden on to evening bore, With head bowed on his knees Cuchulain stayed; Then Conchubar sent that sweet-throated maid, And she, to win him, his grey hair caressed; In vain her arms, in vain her soft white breast. Then Conchubar, the subtlest of all men, Ranking his Druids round him ten by ten, Spake thus: `Cuchulain will dwell there and brood For three days more in dreadful quietude, And then arise, and raving slay us all. Chaunt in his ear delusions magical, That he may fight the horses of the sea.' The Druids took them to their mystery, And chaunted for three days. Cuchulain stirred, Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard The cars of battle and his own name cried; And fought with the invulnerable tide.

The Rose of the World WHO dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died. We and the labouring world are passing by: Amid men's souls, that waver and give place Like the pale waters in their wintry race, Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, Lives on this lonely face. Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode: Before you were, or any hearts to beat, Weary and kind one lingered by His seat; He made the world to be a grassy road Before her wandering feet.

THE ROSE OF PEACE IF Michael, leader of God's host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post He would his deeds forget. Brooding no more upon God's wars In his divine homestead, He would go weave out of the stars A chaplet for your head. And all folk seeing him bow down, And white stars tell your praise, Would come at last to God's great town, Led on by gentle ways; And God would bid His warfare cease, Saying all things were well; And softly make a rosy peace, A peace of Heaven with Hell.

THE ROSE OF BATTLE ROSE of all Roses, Rose of all the World! The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled Above the tide of hours, trouble the air, And God's bell buoyed to be the water's care; While hushed from fear, or loud with hope, a band With blown, spray-dabbled hair gather at hand, Turn if you may from battles never done, I call, as they go by me one by one, Danger no refuge holds, and war no peace, For him who hears love sing and never cease, Beside her clean-swept hearth, her quiet shade: But gather all for whom no love hath made A woven silence, or but came to cast A song into the air, and singing passed To smile on the pale dawn; and gather you Who have sought more than is in rain or dew, Or in the sun and moon, or on the earth, Or sighs amid the wandering, starry mirth, Or comes in laughter from the sea's sad lips, And wage God's battles in the long grey ships. The sad, the lonely, the insatiable, To these Old Night shall all her mystery tell; God's bell has claimed them by the little cry Of their sad hearts, that may not live nor die. Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing. Beauty grown sad with its eternity Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea. Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait, For God has bid them share an equal fate; And when at last, defeated in His wars, They have gone down under the same white stars, We shall no longer hear the little cry Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.

A FAERY SONG Sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania, in their bridal sleep under a Cromlech. WE who are old, old and gay, O so old! Thousands of years, thousands of years, If all were told: Give to these children, new from the world, Silence and love; And the long dew-dropping hours of the night, And the stars above: Give to these children, new from the world, Rest far from men. Is anything better, anything better? Tell us it then: Us who are old, old and gay, O so old! Thousands of years, thousands of years, If all were told.

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM I THAT is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees — Those dying generations — at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out Of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. THE TOWER I WHAT shall I do with this absurdity — O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible — No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly, Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back And had the livelong summer day to spend. It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack, Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend Until imagination, ear and eye, Can be content with argument and deal In abstract things; or be derided by A sort of battered kettle at the heel. I pace upon the battlements and stare On the foundations of a house, or where Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth; And send imagination forth Under the day's declining beam, and call Images and memories From ruin or from ancient trees, For I would ask a question of them all. Beyond that ridge lived Mrs. French, and once When every silver candlestick or sconce Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine. A serving-man, that could divine That most respected lady's every wish, Ran and with the garden shears Clipped an insolent farmer's ears And brought them in a little covered dish. Some few remembered still when I was young A peasant girl commended by a Song, Who'd lived somewhere upon that rocky place, And praised the colour of her face, And had the greater joy in praising her, Remembering that, if walked she there, Farmers jostled at the fair So great a glory did the song confer. And certain men, being maddened by those rhymes, Or else by toasting her a score of times, Rose from the table and declared it right To test their fancy by their sight; But they mistook the brightness of the moon For the prosaic light of day — Music had driven their wits astray — And one was drowned in the great bog of Cloone. Strange, but the man who made the song was blind; Yet, now I have considered it, I find That nothing strange; the tragedy began With Homer that was a blind man, And Helen has all living hearts betrayed. O may the moon and sunlight seem One inextricable beam, For if I triumph I must make men mad. And I myself created Hanrahan And drove him drunk or sober through the dawn From somewhere in the neighbouring cottages. Caught by an old man's juggleries He stumbled, tumbled, fumbled to and fro And had but broken knees for hire And horrible splendour of desire; I thought it all out twenty years ago: Good fellows shuffled cards in an old bawn; And when that ancient ruffian's turn was on He so bewitched the cards under his thumb That all but the one card became A pack of hounds and not a pack of cards, And that he changed into a hare. Hanrahan rose in frenzy there And followed up those baying creatures towards — O towards I have forgotten what — enough! I must recall a man that neither love Nor music nor an enemy's clipped ear Could, he was so harried, cheer; A figure that has grown so fabulous There's not a neighbour left to say When he finished his dog's day: An ancient bankrupt master of this house. Before that ruin came, for centuries, Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs, And certain men-at-arms there were Whose images, in the Great Memory stored, Come with loud cry and panting breast To break upon a sleeper's rest While their great wooden dice beat on the board. As I would question all, come all who can; Come old, necessitous. half-mounted man; And bring beauty's blind rambling celebrant; The red man the juggler sent Through God-forsaken meadows; Mrs. French, Gifted with so fine an ear; The man drowned in a bog's mire, When mocking Muses chose the country wench. Did all old men and women, rich and poor, Who trod upon these rocks or passed this door, Whether in public or in secret rage As I do now against old age? But I have found an answer in those eyes That are impatient to be gone; Go therefore; but leave Hanrahan, For I need all his mighty memories. Old lecher with a love on every wind, Bring up out of that deep considering mind All that you have discovered in the grave, For it is certain that you have Reckoned up every unforeknown, unseeing plunge, lured by a softening eye, Or by a touch or a sigh, Into the labyrinth of another's being; Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or woman lost.? If on the lost, admit you turned aside From a great labyrinth out of pride, Cowardice, some silly over-subtle thought Or anything called conscience once; And that if memory recur, the sun's Under eclipse and the day blotted out. III It is time that I wrote my will; I choose upstanding men That climb the streams until The fountain leap, and at dawn Drop their cast at the side Of dripping stone; I declare They shall inherit my pride, The pride of people that were Bound neither to Cause nor to State. Neither to slaves that were spat on, Nor to the tyrants that spat, The people of Burke and of Grattan That gave, though free to refuse — pride, like that of the morn, When the headlong light is loose, Or that of the fabulous horn, Or that of the sudden shower When all streams are dry, Or that of the hour When the swan must fix his eye Upon a fading gleam, Float out upon a long Last reach of glittering stream And there sing his last song. And I declare my faith: I mock plotinus' thought And cry in plato's teeth, Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul, Aye, sun and moon and star, all, And further add to that That, being dead, we rise, Dream and so create Translunar paradise. I have prepared my peace With learned Italian things And the proud stones of Greece, Poet's imaginings And memories of love, Memories of the words of women, All those things whereof Man makes a superhuman, Mirror-resembling dream. As at the loophole there The daws chatter and scream, And drop twigs layer upon layer. When they have mounted up, The mother bird will rest On their hollow top, And so warm her wild nest. I leave both faith and pride To young upstanding men Climbing the mountain-side, That under bursting dawn They may drop a fly; Being of that metal made Till it was broken by This sedentary trade. Now shall I make my soul, Compelling it to study In a learned school Till the wreck of body, Slow decay of blood, Testy delirium Or dull decrepitude, Or what worse evil come — The death of friends, or death Of every brilliant eye That made a catch in the breath — . Seem but the clouds of the sky When the horizon fades; Or a bird's sleepy cry Among the deepening shades. MEDITATIONS IN TIME OF CIVIL WAR I Ancestral Houses SURELY among a rich man s flowering lawns, Amid the rustle of his planted hills, Life overflows without ambitious pains; And rains down life until the basin spills, And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains As though to choose whatever shape it wills And never stoop to a mechanical Or servile shape, at others' beck and call. Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not Sung Had he not found it certain beyond dreams That out of life's own self-delight had sprung The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams, And not a fountain, were the symbol which Shadows the inherited glory of the rich. Some violent bitter man, some powerful man Called architect and artist in, that they, Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone The sweetness that all longed for night and day, The gentleness none there had ever known; But when the master's buried mice can play. And maybe the great-grandson of that house, For all its bronze and marble, 's but a mouse. O what if gardens where the peacock strays With delicate feet upon old terraces, Or else all Juno from an urn displays Before the indifferent garden deities; O what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease And Childhood a delight for every sense, But take our greatness with our violence? What if the glory of escutcheoned doors, And buildings that a haughtier age designed, The pacing to and fro on polished floors Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined With famous portraits of our ancestors; What if those things the greatest of mankind Consider most to magnify, or to bless, But take our greatness with our bitterness? II My House An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower, A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall, An acre of stony ground, Where the symbolic rose can break in flower, Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable, The sound of the rain or sound Of every wind that blows; The stilted water-hen Crossing Stream again Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows; A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone, A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth, A candle and written page. Il Penseroso's Platonist toiled on In some like chamber, shadowing forth How the daemonic rage Imagined everything. Benighted travellers From markets and from fairs Have seen his midnight candle glimmering. Two men have founded here. A man-at-arms Gathered a score of horse and spent his days In this tumultuous spot, Where through long wars and sudden night alarms His dwindling score and he seemed castaways Forgetting and forgot; And I, that after me My bodily heirs may find, To exalt a lonely mind, Befitting emblems of adversity. III My Table Two heavy trestles, and a board Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword, By pen and paper lies, That it may moralise My days out of their aimlessness. A bit of an embroidered dress Covers its wooden sheath. Chaucer had not drawn breath When it was forged. In Sato's house, Curved like new moon, moon-luminous It lay five hundred years. Yet if no change appears No moon; only an aching heart Conceives a changeless work of art. Our learned men have urged That when and where 'twas forged A marvellous accomplishment, In painting or in pottery, went From father unto son And through the centuries ran And seemed unchanging like the sword. Soul's beauty being most adored, Men and their business took Me soul's unchanging look; For the most rich inheritor, Knowing that none could pass Heaven's door, That loved inferior art, Had such an aching heart That he, although a country's talk For silken clothes and stately walk. Had waking wits; it seemed Juno's peacock screamed. IV My Descendants Having inherited a vigorous mind From my old fathers, I must nourish dreams And leave a woman and a man behind As vigorous of mind, and yet it seems Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind, Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams, But the torn petals strew the garden plot; And there's but common greenness after that. And what if my descendants lose the flower Through natural declension of the soul, Through too much business with the passing hour, Through too much play, or marriage with a fool? May this laborious stair and this stark tower Become a roofless min that the owl May build in the cracked masonry and cry Her desolation to the desolate sky. The Primum Mobile that fashioned us Has made the very owls in circles move; And I, that count myself most prosperous, Seeing that love and friendship are enough, For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house And decked and altered it for a girl's love, And know whatever flourish and decline These stones remain their monument and mine. V The Road at My Door An affable Irregular, A heavily-built Falstaffian man, Comes cracking jokes of civil war As though to die by gunshot were The finest play under the sun. A brown Lieutenant and his men, Half dressed in national uniform, Stand at my door, and I complain Of the foul weather, hail and rain, A pear-tree broken by the storm. I count those feathered balls of soot The moor-hen guides upon the stream. To silence the envy in my thought; And turn towards my chamber, caught In the cold snows of a dream. VI The Stare's Nest by My Window The bees build in the crevices Of loosening masonry, and there The mother birds bring grubs and flies. My wall is loosening; honey-bees, Come build in the empty house of the state. We are closed in, and the key is turned On our uncertainty; somewhere A man is killed, or a house burned, Yet no cleat fact to be discerned: Come build in he empty house of the stare. A barricade of stone or of wood; Some fourteen days of civil war; Last night they trundled down the road That dead young soldier in his blood: Come build in the empty house of the stare. We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare; More Substance in our enmities Than in our love; O honey-bees, Come build in the empty house of the stare. VII I see Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness I climb to the tower-top and lean upon broken stone, A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all, Valley, river, and elms, under the light of a moon That seems unlike itself, that seems unchangeable, A glittering sword out of the east. A puff of wind And those white glimmering fragments of the mist sweep by. Frenzies bewilder, reveries perturb the mind; Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind's eye. `Vengeance upon the murderers,' the cry goes up, `Vengeance for Jacques Molay.' In cloud-pale rags, or in lace, The rage-driven, rage-tormented, and rage-hungry troop, Trooper belabouring trooper, biting at arm or at face, Plunges towards nothing, arms and fingers spreading wide For the embrace of nothing; and I, my wits astray Because of all that senseless tumult, all but cried For vengeance on the murderers of Jacques Molay. Their legs long, delicate and slender, aquamarine their eyes, Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs. The ladies close their musing eyes. No prophecies, Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs, Have closed the ladies' eyes, their minds are but a pool Where even longing drowns under its own excess; Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness. The cloud-pale unicorns, the eyes of aquamarine, The quivering half-closed eyelids, the rags of cloud or of lace, Or eyes that rage has brightened, arms it has made lean, Give place to an indifferent multitude, give place To brazen hawks. Nor self-delighting reverie, Nor hate of what's to come, nor pity for what's gone, Nothing but grip of claw, and the eye's complacency, The innumerable clanging wings that have put out the moon. I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair Wonder how many times I could have proved my worth In something that all others understand or share; But O! ambitious heart, had such a proof drawn forth A company of friends, a conscience set at ease, It had but made us pine the more. The abstract joy, The half-read wisdom of daemonic images, Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy. NINETEEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN MANY ingenious lovely things are gone That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, protected from the circle of the moon That pitches common things about. There stood Amid the ornamental bronze and stone An ancient image made of olive wood — And gone are Phidias' famous ivories And all the golden grasshoppers and bees. We too had many pretty toys when young: A law indifferent to blame or praise, To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays; Public opinion ripening for so long We thought it would outlive all future days. O what fine thought we had because we thought That the worst rogues and rascals had died out. All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned, And a great army but a showy thing; What matter that no cannon had been turned Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king Thought that unless a little powder burned The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting And yet it lack all glory; and perchance The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance. Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery Can leave the mother, murdered at her door, To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free; The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole. He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand, Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent On master-work of intellect or hand, No honour leave its mighty monument, Has but one comfort left: all triumph would But break upon his ghostly solitude. But is there any comfort to be found? Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say? That country round None dared admit, if Such a thought were his, Incendiary or bigot could be found To burn that stump on the Acropolis, Or break in bits the famous ivories Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees. When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth, It seemed that a dragon of air Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round Or hurried them off on its own furious path; So the platonic Year Whirls out new right and wrong, Whirls in the old instead; All men are dancers and their tread Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong. III Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone, An image of its state; The wings half spread for flight, The breast thrust out in pride Whether to play, or to ride Those winds that clamour of approaching night. A man in his own secret meditation Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made In art or politics; Some platonist affirms that in the station Where we should cast off body and trade The ancient habit sticks, And that if our works could But vanish with our breath That were a lucky death, For triumph can but mar our solitude. The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven: That image can bring wildness, bring a rage To end all things, to end What my laborious life imagined, even The half-imagined, the half-written page; O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed. We, who seven years ago Talked of honour and of truth, Shriek with pleasure if we show The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth. Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the levelling wind. Come let us mock at the wise; With all those calendars whereon They fixed old aching eyes, They never saw how seasons run, And now but gape at the sun. Come let us mock at the good That fancied goodness might be gay, And sick of solitude Might proclaim a holiday: Wind shrieked — and where are they? Mock mockers after that That would not lift a hand maybe To help good, wise or great To bar that foul storm out, for we Traffic in mockery. Violence upon the roads: violence of horses; Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane, But wearied running round and round in their courses All break and vanish, and evil gathers head: Herodias' daughters have returned again, A sudden blast of dusty wind and after Thunder of feet, tumult of images, Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind; And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries, According to the wind, for all are blind. But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon There lurches past, his great eyes without thought Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks, That insolent fiend Robert Artisson To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks. THE WHEEL THROUGH winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all; And after that there s nothing good Because the spring-time has not come — Nor know that what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb. YOUTH AND AGE MUCH did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest. THE NEW FACES IF you, that have grown old, were the first dead, Neither catalpa tree nor scented lime Should hear my living feet, nor would I tread Where we wrought that shall break the teeth of Time. Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms; night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they. A PRAYER FOR MY SON BID a strong ghost stand at the head That my Michael may sleep sound, Nor cry, nor turn in the bed Till his morning meal come round; And may departing twilight keep All dread afar till morning's back. That his mother may not lack Her fill of sleep. Bid the ghost have sword in fist: Some there are, for I avow Such devilish things exist, Who have planned his murder, for they know Of some most haughty deed or thought That waits upon his future days, And would through hatred of the bays Bring that to nought. Though You can fashion everything From nothing every day, and teach The morning stats to sing, You have lacked articulate speech To tell Your simplest want, and known, Wailing upon a woman's knee, All of that worst ignominy Of flesh and bone; And when through all the town there ran The servants of Your enemy, A woman and a man, Unless the Holy Writings lie, Hurried through the smooth and rough And through the fertile and waste, protecting, till the danger past, With human love. TWO SONGS FROM A PLAY 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 And bear that beating heart away; Of Magnus Annus at the spring, As though God's death were but a play. Another Troy must rise and set, Another lineage feed the crow, Another Argo's painted prow Drive to a flashier bauble yet. The Roman Empire stood appalled: It dropped the reins of peace and war When that fierce virgin and her Star Out of the fabulous darkness called. In pity for man's darkening thought He walked that room and issued thence In Galilean turbulence; The Babylonian starlight brought A fabulous, formless darkness in; Odour of blood when Christ was slain Made all platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline. Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love's pleasure drives his love away, The painter's brush consumes his dreams; The herald's cry, the soldier's tread Exhaust his glory and his might: Whatever flames upon the night Man's own resinous heart has fed. FRAGMENTS I LOCKE sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side. II Where got I that truth? Out of a medium's mouth. Out of nothing it came, Out of the forest loam, Out of dark night where lay The crowns of Nineveh. LEDA AND THE SWAN A SUDDEN blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? ON A PICTURE OF A BLACK CENTAUR BY EDMUND DULAC YOUR hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood, Even where horrible green parrots call and swing. My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud. I knew that horse-play, knew it for a murderous thing. What wholesome sun has ripened is wholesome food to eat, And that alone; yet I, being driven half insane Because of some green wing, gathered old mummy wheat In the mad abstract dark and ground it grain by grain And after baked it slowly in an oven; but now I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound. Stretch out your limbs and sleep a long Saturnian sleep; I have loved you better than my soul for all my words, And there is none so fit to keep a watch and keep Unwearied eyes upon those horrible green birds. AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN I WALK through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and histories, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way — the children's eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling public man. I dream of a Ledaean body, bent Above a sinking fire. a tale that she Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event That changed some childish day to tragedy — Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent Into a sphere from youthful sympathy, Or else, to alter Plato's parable, Into the yolk and white of the one shell. III And thinking of that fit of grief or rage I look upon one child or t'other there And wonder if she stood so at that age — For even daughters of the swan can share Something of every paddler's heritage — And had that colour upon cheek or hair, And thereupon my heart is driven wild: She stands before me as a living child. Her present image floats into the mind — Did Quattrocento finger fashion it Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind And took a mess of shadows for its meat? And I though never of Ledaean kind Had pretty plumage once — enough of that, Better to smile on all that smile, and show There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow. What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap Honey of generation had betrayed, And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape As recollection or the drug decide, Would think her Son, did she but see that shape With sixty or more winters on its head, A compensation for the pang of his birth, Or the uncertainty of his setting forth? Plato thought nature but a spume that plays Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; Solider Aristotle played the taws Upon the bottom of a king of kings; World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings What a star sang and careless Muses heard: Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird. VII Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother's reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose. And yet they too break hearts — O presences That passion, piety or affection knows, And that all heavenly glory symbolise — O self-born mockers of man's enterprise; VIII Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul. Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? COLONUS' PRAISE Chorus. Come praise Colonus' horses, and come praise The wine-dark of the wood's intricacies, The nightingale that deafens daylight there, If daylight ever visit where, Unvisited by tempest or by sun, Immortal ladies tread the ground Dizzy with harmonious sound, Semele's lad a gay companion. And yonder in the gymnasts' garden thrives The self-sown, self-begotten shape that gives Athenian intellect its mastery, Even the grey-leaved olive-tree Miracle-bred out of the living stone; Nor accident of peace nor war Shall wither that old marvel, for The great grey-eyed Athene stareS thereon. Who comes into this country, and has come Where golden crocus and narcissus bloom, Where the Great Mother, mourning for her daughter And beauty-drunken by the water Glittering among grey-leaved olive-trees, Has plucked a flower and sung her loss; Who finds abounding Cephisus Has found the loveliest spectacle there is. because this country has a pious mind And so remembers that when all mankind But trod the road, or splashed about the shore, Poseidon gave it bit and oar, Every Colonus lad or lass discourses Of that oar and of that bit; Summer and winter, day and night, Of horses and horses of the sea, white horses. WISDOM THE true faith discovered was When painted panel, statuary. Glass-mosaic, window-glass, Amended what was told awry By some peasant gospeller; Swept the Sawdust from the floor Of that working-carpenter. Miracle had its playtime where In damask clothed and on a seat Chryselephantine, cedar-boarded, His majestic Mother sat Stitching at a purple hoarded That He might be nobly breeched In starry towers of Babylon Noah's freshet never reached. King Abundance got Him on Innocence; and Wisdom He. That cognomen sounded best Considering what wild infancy Drove horror from His Mother's breast. THE FOOL BY THE ROADSIDE WHEN all works that have From cradle run to grave From grave to cradle run instead; When thoughts that a fool Has wound upon a spool Are but loose thread, are but loose thread; When cradle and spool are past And I mere shade at last Coagulate of stuff Transparent like the wind, I think that I may find A faithful love, a faithful love. OWEN AHERNE AND HIS DANCERS A STRANGE thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade, Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out. It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad. The south wind brought it longing, and the east wind despair, The west wind made it pitiful, and the north wind afraid. It feared to give its love a hurt with all the tempest there; It feared the hurt that she could give and therefore it went mad. I can exchange opinion with any neighbouring mind, I have as healthy flesh and blood as any rhymer's had, But O! my Heart could bear no more when the upland caught the wind; I ran, I ran, from my love's side because my Heart went mad. II The Heart behind its rib laughed out. `You have called me mad,' it said, `Because I made you turn away and run from that young child; How could she mate with fifty years that was so wildly bred? Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.' `You but imagine lies all day, O murderer,' I replied. `And all those lies have but one end, poor wretches to betray; I did not find in any cage the woman at my side. O but her heart would break to learn my thoughts are far away.' 'Speak all your mind,' my Heart sang out, `speak all your mind; who cares, Now that your tongue cannot persuade the child till she mistake Her childish gratitude for love and match your fifty years? O let her choose a young man now and all for his wild sake.' A MAN YOUNG AND OLD I First Love THOUGH nurtured like the sailing moon In beauty's murderous brood, She walked awhile and blushed awhile And on my pathway stood Until I thought her body bore A heart of flesh and blood. But since I laid a hand thereon And found a heart of stone I have attempted many things And not a thing is done, For every hand is lunatic That travels on the moon. She smiled and that transfigured me And left me but a lout, Maundering here, and maundering there, Emptier of thought Than the heavenly circuit of its stars When the moon sails out. II Human Dignity Like the moon her kindness is, If kindness I may call What has no comprehension in't, But is the same for all As though my sorrow were a scene Upon a painted wall. So like a bit of stone I lie Under a broken tree. I could recover if I shrieked My heart's agony To passing bird, but I am dumb From human dignity. III The Mermaid A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown. IV The Death of the Hare I have pointed out the yelling pack, The hare leap to the wood, And when I pass a compliment Rejoice as lover should At the drooping of an eye, At the mantling of the blood. Then' suddenly my heart is wrung By her distracted air And I remember wildness lost And after, swept from there, Am set down standing in the wood At the death of the hare. V The Empty Cup A crazy man that found a cup, When all but dead of thirst, Hardly dared to wet his mouth Imagining, moon-accursed , That another mouthful And his beating heart would burst. October last I found it too But found it dry as bone, And for that reason am I crazed And my sleep is gone. VI His Memories We should be hidden from their eyes, Being but holy shows And bodies broken like a thorn Whereon the bleak north blows, To think of buried Hector And that none living knows. The women take so little stock In what I do or say They'd sooner leave their cosseting To hear a jackass bray; My arms are like the twisted thorn And yet there beauty lay; The first of all the tribe lay there And did such pleasure take — She who had brought great Hector down And put all Troy to wreck — That she cried into this ear, `Strike me if I shriek.' VII The Friends of his Youth Laughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it, And when the moon's pot-bellied I get a laughing fit, For that old Madge comes down the lane, A stone upon her breast, And a cloak wrapped about the stone, And she can get no rest With singing hush and hush-a-bye; She that has been wild And barren as a breaking wave Thinks that the stone's a child. And Peter that had great affairs And was a pushing man Shrieks, `I am King of the Peacocks,' And perches on a stone; And then I laugh till tears run down And the heart thumps at my side, Remembering that her shriek was love And that he shrieks from pride. VIII Summer and Spring We sat under an old thorn-tree And talked away the night, Told all that had been said or done Since first we saw the light, And when we talked of growing up Knew that we'd halved a soul And fell the one in t'other's arms That we might make it whole; Then peter had a murdering look, For it seemed that he and she Had spoken of their childish days Under that very tree. O what a bursting out there was, And what a blossoming, When we had all the summer-time And she had all the spring! IX The Secrets of the Old I have old women's secrets now That had those of the young; Madge tells me what I dared not think When my blood was strong, And what had drowned a lover once Sounds like an old song. Though Margery is stricken dumb If thrown in Madge's way, We three make up a solitude; For none alive to-day Can know the stories that we know Or say the things we say: How such a man pleased women most Of all that are gone, How such a pair loved many years And such a pair but one, Stories of the bed of straw Or the bed of down. X His Wildness O bid me mount and sail up there Amid the cloudy wrack, For peg and Meg and Paris' love That had so straight a back, Are gone away, and some that stay Have changed their silk for sack. Were I but there and none to hear I'd have a peacock cry, For that is natural to a man That lives in memory, Being all alone I'd nurse a stone And sing it lullaby. XI From 'Oedipus at Colonus' Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel- wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain. Even from that delight memory treasures so, Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow, As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know. In the long echoing street the laughing dancers throng, The bride is carried to the bridegroom's chamber through torchlight and tumultuous song; I celebrate the silent kiss that ends short life or long. Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away. THE THREE MONUMENTS THEY hold their public meetings where Our most renowned patriots stand, One among the birds of the air, A stumpier on either hand; And all the popular statesmen say That purity built up the State And after kept it from decay; And let all base ambition be, For intellect would make us proud And pride bring in impurity: The three old rascals laugh aloud. ALL SOULS' NIGHT Epilogue to `A Vision' MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell And may a lesser bell sound through the room; And it is All Souls' Night, And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come; For it is a ghost's right, His element is so fine Being sharpened by his death, To drink from the wine-breath While our gross palates drink from the whole wine. I need some mind that, if the cannon sound From every quarter of the world, can stay Wound in mind's pondering As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound; Because I have a marvellous thing to say, A certain marvellous thing None but the living mock, Though not for sober ear; It may be all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock. Horton's the first I call. He loved strange thought And knew that sweet extremity of pride That's called platonic love, And that to such a pitch of passion wrought Nothing could bring him, when his lady died, Anodyne for his love. Words were but wasted breath; One dear hope had he: The inclemency Of that or the next winter would be death. Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell Whether of her or God he thought the most, But think that his mind's eye, When upward turned, on one sole image fell; And that a slight companionable ghost, Wild with divinity, Had so lit up the whole Immense miraculous house The Bible promised us, It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl. On Florence Emery I call the next, Who finding the first wrinkles on a face Admired and beautiful, And knowing that the future would be vexed With 'minished beauty, multiplied commonplace, preferred to teach a school Away from neighbour or friend, Among dark skins, and there permit foul years to wear Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end. Before that end much had she ravelled out From a discourse in figurative speech By some learned Indian On the soul's journey. How it is whirled about, Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach, Until it plunge into the sun; And there, free and yet fast, Being both Chance and Choice, Forget its broken toys And sink into its own delight at last. And I call up MacGregor from the grave, For in my first hard springtime we were friends. Although of late estranged. I thought him half a lunatic, half knave, And told him so, but friendship never ends; And what if mind seem changed, And it seem changed with the mind, When thoughts rise up unbid On generous things that he did And I grow half contented to be blind! He had much industry at setting out, Much boisterous courage, before loneliness Had driven him crazed; For meditations upon unknown thought Make human intercourse grow less and less; They are neither paid nor praised. but he d object to the host, The glass because my glass; A ghost-lover he was And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost. But names are nothing. What matter who it be, So that his elements have grown so fine The fume of muscatel Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy No living man can drink from the whole wine. I have mummy truths to tell Whereat the living mock, Though not for sober ear, For maybe all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock. Such thought — such thought have I that hold it tight Till meditation master all its parts, Nothing can stay my glance Until that glance run in the world's despite To where the damned have howled away their hearts, And where the blessed dance; Such thought, that in it bound I need no other thing, Wound in mind's wandering As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.