<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h2>THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE</h2>
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<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"> <ANTIMG src="images/img02.jpg" width-obs="120" height-obs="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"> <ANTIMG src="images/img03.jpg" width-obs="120" height-obs="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"><SPAN name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</SPAN></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'><SPAN href="#Page_1">1</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Memory of Major Robert Gregory</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_4">4</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Irish Airman foresees his Death</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_13">13</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Men improve with the Years</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_14">14</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Collar-Bone of a Hare</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_15">15</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Under the Round Tower</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_17">17</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Solomon to Sheba</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_19">19</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Living Beauty</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_21">21</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Song</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_22">22</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">To a Young Beauty</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_23">23</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">To a Young Girl</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_24">24</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Scholars</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_25">25</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Tom O'Roughley</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_26">26</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Sad Shepherd</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_27">27</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Lines written in Dejection</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_39">39</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Dawn</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_40">40</SPAN><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</SPAN></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">On Woman</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_41">41</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Fisherman</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_44">44</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Hawk</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_46">46</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Memory</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_47">47</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Her Praise</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_48">48</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The People</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_50">50</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">His Phoenix</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_54">54</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Thought from Propertius</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_58">58</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Broken Dreams</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_59">59</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Deep-Sworn Vow</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_63">63</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Presences</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_64">64</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Balloon of the Mind</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_66">66</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">To a Squirrel at Kyle-Na-Gno</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_67">67</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">On being asked for a War Poem</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_68">68</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Memory of Alfred Pollexfen</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_69">69</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Upon a Dying Lady</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_72">72</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Ego Dominus Tuus</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_79">79</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Prayer on going into my House</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_86">86</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Phases of the Moon</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_88">88</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Cat and the Moon</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_102">102</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Saint and the Hunchback</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_104">104</SPAN><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</SPAN></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Two Songs of a Fool</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_106">106</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Another Song of a Fool</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_108">108</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Double Vision of Michael Robartes</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_109">109</SPAN></td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Note</span></td><td align='right'><SPAN href="#Page_115">115</SPAN></td></tr>
</table></div>
<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</SPAN></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"><SPAN name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</SPAN></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 <SPAN href="#Page_64">64</SPAN>: "lecturn" <i>sic</i>—alternative spelling
confirmed.</p>
</div>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />