Delphi Complete Poetry and Plays of W. B. Yeats (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)

by W. B. Yeats

  ‘When I was brought to bed,’

  And all the while her needle pulled

  The gold and silver thread.

  She pulled the thread and bit the thread

  And made a golden gown,

  And wept because she had dreamt that I

  Was born to wear a crown.

  ‘When she was got,’ my mother sang,

  ‘I heard a sea-mew cry,

  And saw a flake of the yellow foam

  That dropped upon my thigh.’

  How therefore could she help but braid

  The gold into my hair,

  And dream that I should carry

  The golden top of care?

  THE REALISTS

  Hope that you may understand!

  What can books of men that wive

  In a dragon-guarded land,

  Paintings of the dolphin-drawn

  Sea-nymphs in their pearly waggons

  Do, but awake a hope to live

  That had gone

  With the dragons?

  I

  THE WITCH

  Toil, and grow rich,

  What’s that but to lie

  With a foul witch

  And after, drained dry,

  To be brought

  To the chamber where

  Lies one long sought

  With despair.

  II

  THE PEACOCK

  What’s riches to him

  That has made a great peacock

  With the pride of his eye?

  The wind-beaten, stone-grey,

  And desolate Three-rock

  Would nourish his whim.

  Live he or die

  Amid wet rocks and heather,

  His ghost will be gay

  Adding feather to feather

  For the pride of his eye.

  THE MOUNTAIN TOMB

  Pour wine and dance if Manhood still have pride,

  Bring roses if the rose be yet in bloom;

  The cataract smokes upon the mountain side,

  Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.

  Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet

  That there be no foot silent in the room

  Nor mouth from kissing, nor from wine unwet;

  Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.

  In vain, in vain; the cataract still cries

  The everlasting taper lights the gloom;

  All wisdom shut into his onyx eyes

  Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb.

  TO A CHILD DANCING IN THE WIND

  I

  Dance there upon the shore;

  What need have you to care

  For wind or water’s roar?

  And tumble out your hair

  That the salt drops have wet;

  Being young you have not known

  The fool’s triumph, nor yet

  Love lost as soon as won,

  Nor the best labourer dead

  And all the sheaves to bind.

  What need have you to dread

  The monstrous crying of wind?

  II

  Has no one said those daring

  Kind eyes should be more learn’d?

  Or warned you how despairing

  The moths are when they are burned,

  I could have warned you, but you are young,

  So we speak a different tongue.

  O you will take whatever’s offered

  And dream that all the world’s a friend,

  Suffer as your mother suffered,

  Be as broken in the end.

  But I am old and you are young,

  And I speak a barbarous tongue.

  A MEMORY OF YOUTH

  The moments passed as at a play,

  I had the wisdom love brings forth;

  I had my share of mother wit

  And yet for all that I could say,

  And though I had her praise for it,

  A cloud blown from the cut-throat north

  Suddenly hid love’s moon away.

  Believing every word I said

  I praised her body and her mind

  Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,

  And pleasure made her cheeks grow red,

  And vanity her footfall light,

  Yet we, for all that praise, could find

  Nothing but darkness overhead.

  We sat as silent as a stone,

  We knew, though she’d not said a word,

  That even the best of love must die,

  And had been savagely undone

  Were it not that love upon the cry

  Of a most ridiculous little bird

  Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.

  FALLEN MAJESTY

  Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,

  And even old men’s eyes grew dim, this hand alone,

  Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping place,

  Babbling of fallen majesty, records what’s gone.

  The lineaments, a heart that laughter has made sweet,

  These, these remain, but I record what’s gone. A crowd

  Will gather, and not know it walks the very street

  Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.

  FRIENDS

  Now must I these three praise —

  Three women that have wrought

  What joy is in my days;

  One that no passing thought,

  Nor those unpassing cares,

  No, not in these fifteen

  Many times troubled years,

  Could ever come between

  Heart and delighted heart;

  And one because her hand

  Had strength that could unbind

  What none can understand,

  What none can have and thrive,

  Youth’s dreamy load, till she

  So changed me that I live

  Labouring in ecstasy.

  And what of her that took

  All till my youth was gone

  With scarce a pitying look?

  How should I praise that one?

  When day begins to break

  I count my good and bad,

  Being wakeful for her sake,

  Remembering what she had,

  What eagle look still shows,

  While up from my heart’s root

  So great a sweetness flows

  I shake from head to foot.

  THE COLD HEAVEN

  Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting Heaven

  That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,

  And thereupon imagination and heart were driven

  So wild that every casual thought of that and this

  Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season

  With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;

  And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,

  Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,

  Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,

  Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent

  Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken

  By the injustice of the skies for punishment?

  THAT THE NIGHT COME

  She lived in storm and strife,

  Her soul had such desire

  For what proud death may bring

  That it could not endure

  The common good of life,

  But lived as ‘twere a king

  That packed his marriage day

  With banneret and pennon,

  Trumpet and kettledrum,

  And the outrageous cannon,

  To bundle time away

  That the night come.

  AN APPOINTMENT

  Being out of heart with government

  I took a broken root to fling

  Where the proud, wayward squirrel went,

  Taking delight that he could spring;

  And he, with that low w
hinnying sound

  That is like laughter, sprang again

  And so to the other tree at a bound.

  Nor the tame will, nor timid brain,

  Bred that fierce tooth and cleanly limb

  And threw him up to laugh on the bough;

  No government appointed him.

  I

  THE MAGI

  Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,

  In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones

  Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky

  With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,

  And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,

  And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,

  Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,

  The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

  II

  THE DOLLS

  A doll in the doll-maker’s house

  Looks at the cradle and balls:

  ‘That is an insult to us.’

  But the oldest of all the dolls

  Who had seen, being kept for show,

  Generations of his sort,

  Out-screams the whole shelf: ‘Although

  There’s not a man can report

  Evil of this place,

  The man and the woman bring

  Hither to our disgrace,

  A noisy and filthy thing.’

  Hearing him groan and stretch

  The doll-maker’s wife is aware

  Her husband has heard the wretch,

  And crouched by the arm of his chair,

  She murmurs into his ear,

  Head upon shoulder leant:

  ‘My dear, my dear, oh dear,

  It was an accident.’

  A COAT

  I made my song a coat

  Covered with embroideries

  Out of old mythologies

  From heel to throat;

  But the fools caught it,

  Wore it in the world’s eye

  As though they’d wrought it.

  Song, let them take it

  For there’s more enterprise

  In walking naked.

  CLOSING RHYMES

  While I, from that reed-throated whisperer

  Who comes at need, although not now as once

  A clear articulation in the air

  But inwardly, surmise companions

  Beyond the fling of the dull ass’s hoof,

  — Ben Jonson’s phrase — and find when June is come

  At Kyle-na-no under that ancient roof

  A sterner conscience and a friendlier home,

  I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,

  Those undreamt accidents that have made me

  — Seeing that Fame has perished this long while

  Being but a part of ancient ceremony —

  Notorious, till all my priceless things

  Are but a post the passing dogs defile.

  THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE

  First published in 1917, this collection of poems is considered to be part of Yeats’ ‘middle stage’, which is particularly concerned with Irish nationalism and the creation of an Irish aesthetic, as well as traditional love poems. The title poem The Wild Swans at Coole is one of Yeats’ most celebrated works. Written in a regular stanza form, with five six-line verses in iambic meter and ABCBDD rhyme scheme, the poem evokes a mournful impression. The Wild Swans at Coole is about Yeats’ melancholic thoughts, as he nears the ‘autumn’ of his life and he ponders whether the joys of love, as represented by the departing swans, may avoid him completely. The poem was written when Yeats was aged 52 and still unmarried, having struggled to maintain a long-lasting relationship due to his continual infatuation with Maud Gonne, the feminist revolutionary, who repeatedly rejected his proposals of marriage.

  Yeats, close to the time of publication

  Maud Gonne, Yeats’ life-long beloved

  CONTENTS

  THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE

  IN MEMORY OF MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY

  AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES HIS DEATH

  MEN IMPROVE WITH THE YEARS

  THE COLLAR-BONE OF A HARE

  UNDER THE ROUND TOWER

  SOLOMON TO SHEBA

  THE LIVING BEAUTY

  A SONG

  TO A YOUNG BEAUTY

  TO A YOUNG GIRL

  THE SCHOLARS

  TOM O’ROUGHLEY

  THE SAD SHEPHERD

  LINES WRITTEN IN DEJECTION

  THE DAWN

  ON WOMAN

  THE FISHERMAN

  THE HAWK

  MEMORY

  HER PRAISE

  THE PEOPLE

  HIS PHOENIX

  A THOUGHT FROM PROPERTIUS

  BROKEN DREAMS

  A DEEP-SWORN VOW

  PRESENCES

  THE BALLOON OF THE MIND

  TO A SQUIRREL AT KYLE-NA-GNO

  ON BEING ASKED FOR A WAR POEM

  IN MEMORY OF ALFRED POLLEXFEN

  UPON A DYING LADY

  HER COURTESY

  CERTAIN ARTISTS BRING HER DOLLS AND DRAWINGS

  SHE TURNS THE DOLLS’ FACES TO THE WALL

  THE END OF DAY

  HER RACE

  HER COURAGE

  HER FRIENDS BRING HER A CHRISTMAS TREE

  EGO DOMINUS TUUS

  A PRAYER ON GOING INTO MY HOUSE

  THE PHASES OF THE MOON

  THE CAT AND THE MOON

  THE SAINT AND THE HUNCHBACK

  TWO SONGS OF A FOOL

  ANOTHER SONG OF A FOOL

  THE DOUBLE VISION OF MICHAEL ROBARTES

  The first edition

  Sunset over Coole Lough, the setting of the title poem

  PREFACE

  This book is, in part, a reprint of The Wild Swans at Coole, printed a year ago on my sister’s hand-press at Dundrum, Co. Dublin. I have not, however, reprinted a play which may be a part of a book of new plays suggested by the dance plays of Japan, and I have added a number of new poems. Michael Robartes and John Aherne, whose names occur in one or other of these, are characters in some stories I wrote years ago, who have once again become a part of the phantasmagoria through which I can alone express my convictions about the world. I have the fancy that I read the name John Aherne among those of men prosecuted for making a disturbance at the first production of “The Play Boy,” which may account for his animosity to myself.

  W. B. Y.

  BALLYLEE, CO. GALWAY,

  September 1918.

  THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE

  The trees are in their autumn beauty,

  The woodland paths are dry,

  Under the October twilight the water

  Mirrors a still sky;

  Upon the brimming water among the stones

  Are nine and fifty swans.

  The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me

  Since I first made my count;

  I saw, before I had well finished,

  All suddenly mount

  And scatter wheeling in great broken rings

  Upon their clamorous wings.

  I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

  And now my heart is sore.

  All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,

  The first time on this shore,

  The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

  Trod with a lighter tread.

  Unwearied still, lover by lover,

  They paddle in the cold,

  Companionable streams or climb the air;

  Their hearts have not grown old;

  Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

  Attend upon them still.

  But now they drift on the still water

  Mysterious, beautiful;

  Among what rushes will they build,

  By what lake’s edge or pool

  Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day

  To find they have flown away?

  IN MEMORY OF MAJ
OR ROBERT GREGORY

  1

  Now that we’re almost settled in our house

  I’ll name the friends that cannot sup with us

  Beside a fire of turf in the ancient tower,

  And having talked to some late hour

  Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed:

  Discoverers of forgotten truth

  Or mere companions of my youth,

  All, all are in my thoughts to-night, being dead.

  2

  Always we’d have the new friend meet the old,

  And we are hurt if either friend seem cold,

  And there is salt to lengthen out the smart

  In the affections of our heart,

  And quarrels are blown up upon that head;

  But not a friend that I would bring

  This night can set us quarrelling,

  For all that come into my mind are dead.

  3

  Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind,

  That loved his learning better than mankind,

  Though courteous to the worst; much falling he

  Brooded upon sanctity

  Till all his Greek and Latin learning seemed

  A long blast upon the horn that brought

  A little nearer to his thought

  A measureless consummation that he dreamed.

  4

  And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,

  That dying chose the living world for text

  And never could have rested in the tomb

  But that, long travelling, he had come

  Towards nightfall upon certain set apart

  In a most desolate stony place,

  Towards nightfall upon a race

  Passionate and simple like his heart.

  5

  And then I think of old George Pollexfen,