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

by W. B. Yeats

Have found the path my goats’ feet cannot find.

  SHEPHERD

  Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have plucked

  Some medicable herb to make our grief

  Less bitter.

  GOATHERD

  They have brought me from that ridge

  Seed pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy.

  [Sings.

  ‘He grows younger every second

  That were all his birthdays reckoned

  Much too solemn seemed;

  Because of what he had dreamed,

  Or the ambitions that he served,

  Much too solemn and reserved.

  Jaunting, journeying

  To his own dayspring,

  He unpacks the loaded pern

  Of all ‘twas pain or joy to learn,

  Of all that he had made.

  The outrageous war shall fade;

  At some old winding whitethorn root

  He’ll practice on the shepherd’s flute,

  Or on the close-cropped grass

  Court his shepherd lass,

  Or run where lads reform our day-time

  Till that is their long shouting play-time;

  Knowledge he shall unwind

  Through victories of the mind,

  Till, clambering at the cradle side,

  He dreams himself his mother’s pride,

  All knowledge lost in trance

  Of sweeter ignorance.’

  SHEPHERD

  When I have shut these ewes and this old ram

  Into the fold, we’ll to the woods and there

  Cut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn bark

  But put no name and leave them at her door.

  To know the mountain and the valley grieve

  May be a quiet thought to wife and mother,

  And children when they spring up shoulder high.

  LINES WRITTEN IN DEJECTION

  When have I last looked on

  The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies

  Of the dark leopards of the moon?

  All the wild witches those most noble ladies,

  For all their broom-sticks and their tears,

  Their angry tears, are gone.

  The holy centaurs of the hills are banished;

  And I have nothing but harsh sun;

  Heroic mother moon has vanished,

  And now that I have come to fifty years

  I must endure the timid sun.

  THE DAWN

  I would be ignorant as the dawn

  That has looked down

  On that old queen measuring a town

  With the pin of a brooch,

  Or on the withered men that saw

  From their pedantic Babylon

  The careless planets in their courses,

  The stars fade out where the moon comes,

  And took their tablets and did sums;

  I would be ignorant as the dawn

  That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach

  Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;

  I would be — for no knowledge is worth a straw —

  Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

  ON WOMAN

  May God be praised for woman

  That gives up all her mind,

  A man may find in no man

  A friendship of her kind

  That covers all he has brought

  As with her flesh and bone,

  Nor quarrels with a thought

  Because it is not her own.

  Though pedantry denies

  It’s plain the Bible means

  That Solomon grew wise

  While talking with his queens.

  Yet never could, although

  They say he counted grass,

  Count all the praises due

  When Sheba was his lass,

  When she the iron wrought, or

  When from the smithy fire

  It shuddered in the water:

  Harshness of their desire

  That made them stretch and yawn,

  Pleasure that comes with sleep,

  Shudder that made them one.

  What else He give or keep

  God grant me — no, not here,

  For I am not so bold

  To hope a thing so dear

  Now I am growing old,

  But when if the tale’s true

  The Pestle of the moon

  That pounds up all anew

  Brings me to birth again —

  To find what once I had

  And know what once I have known,

  Until I am driven mad,

  Sleep driven from my bed,

  By tenderness and care,

  Pity, an aching head,

  Gnashing of teeth, despair;

  And all because of some one

  Perverse creature of chance,

  And live like Solomon

  That Sheba led a dance.

  THE FISHERMAN

  Although I can see him still,

  The freckled man who goes

  To a grey place on a hill

  In grey Connemara clothes

  At dawn to cast his flies,

  It’s long since I began

  To call up to the eyes

  This wise and simple man.

  All day I’d looked in the face

  What I had hoped ‘twould be

  To write for my own race

  And the reality;

  The living men that I hate,

  The dead man that I loved,

  The craven man in his seat,

  The insolent unreproved,

  And no knave brought to book

  Who has won a drunken cheer,

  The witty man and his joke

  Aimed at the commonest ear,

  The clever man who cries

  The catch-cries of the clown,

  The beating down of the wise

  And great Art beaten down.

  Maybe a twelvemonth since

  Suddenly I began,

  In scorn of this audience,

  Imagining a man

  And his sun-freckled face,

  And grey Connemara cloth,

  Climbing up to a place

  Where stone is dark under froth,

  And the down turn of his wrist

  When the flies drop in the stream:

  A man who does not exist,

  A man who is but a dream;

  And cried, ‘Before I am old

  I shall have written him one

  Poem maybe as cold

  And passionate as the dawn.’

  THE HAWK

  ‘Call down the hawk from the air;

  Let him be hooded or caged

  Till the yellow eye has grown mild,

  For larder and spit are bare,

  The old cook enraged,

  The scullion gone wild.’

  ‘I will not be clapped in a hood,

  Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,

  Now I have learnt to be proud

  Hovering over the wood

  In the broken mist

  Or tumbling cloud.’

  ‘What tumbling cloud did you cleave,

  Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,

  Last evening? that I, who had sat

  Dumbfounded before a knave,

  Should give to my friend

  A pretence of wit.’

  MEMORY

  One had a lovely face,

  And two or three had charm,

  But charm and face were in vain

  Because the mountain grass

  Cannot but keep the form

  Where the mountain hare has lain.

  HER PRAISE

  She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.

  I have gone about the house, gone up and down

  As a man does who has published a new book

  Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown,

  And though I have turned the talk by hook or crook

 
; Until her praise should be the uppermost theme,

  A woman spoke of some new tale she had read,

  A man confusedly in a half dream

  As though some other name ran in his head.

  She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.

  I will talk no more of books or the long war

  But walk by the dry thorn until I have found

  Some beggar sheltering from the wind, and there

  Manage the talk until her name come round.

  If there be rags enough he will know her name

  And be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days,

  Though she had young men’s praise and old men’s blame,

  Among the poor both old and young gave her praise.

  THE PEOPLE

  ‘What have I earned for all that work,’ I said,

  ‘For all that I have done at my own charge?

  The daily spite of this unmannerly town,

  Where who has served the most is most defamed,

  The reputation of his lifetime lost

  Between the night and morning. I might have lived,

  And you know well how great the longing has been,

  Where every day my footfall should have lit

  In the green shadow of Ferrara wall;

  Or climbed among the images of the past —

  The unperturbed and courtly images —

  Evening and morning, the steep street of Urbino

  To where the duchess and her people talked

  The stately midnight through until they stood

  In their great window looking at the dawn;

  I might have had no friend that could not mix

  Courtesy and passion into one like those

  That saw the wicks grow yellow in the dawn;

  I might have used the one substantial right

  My trade allows: chosen my company,

  And chosen what scenery had pleased me best.’

  Thereon my phoenix answered in reproof,

  ‘The drunkards, pilferers of public funds,

  All the dishonest crowd I had driven away,

  When my luck changed and they dared meet my face,

  Crawled from obscurity, and set upon me

  Those I had served and some that I had fed;

  Yet never have I, now nor any time,

  Complained of the people.’

  All I could reply

  Was: ‘You, that have not lived in thought but deed,

  Can have the purity of a natural force,

  But I, whose virtues are the definitions

  Of the analytic mind, can neither close

  The eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.’

  And yet, because my heart leaped at her words,

  I was abashed, and now they come to mind

  After nine years, I sink my head abashed.

  HIS PHOENIX

  There is a queen in China, or maybe it’s in Spain,

  And birthdays and holidays such praises can be heard

  Of her unblemished lineaments, a whiteness with no stain,

  That she might be that sprightly girl who was trodden by a bird;

  And there’s a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind,

  Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay

  And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind:

  I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.

  The young men every night applaud their Gaby’s laughing eye,

  And Ruth St. Denis had more charm although she had poor luck,

  From nineteen hundred nine or ten, Pavlova’s had the cry,

  And there’s a player in the States who gathers up her cloak

  And flings herself out of the room when Juliet would be bride

  With all a woman’s passion, a child’s imperious way,

  And there are — but no matter if there are scores beside:

  I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.

  There’s Margaret and Marjorie and Dorothy and Nan,

  A Daphne and a Mary who live in privacy;

  One’s had her fill of lovers, another’s had but one,

  Another boasts, ‘I pick and choose and have but two or three.’

  If head and limb have beauty and the instep’s high and light,

  They can spread out what sail they please for all I have to say,

  Be but the breakers of men’s hearts or engines of delight:

  I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.

  There’ll be that crowd to make men wild through all the centuries,

  And maybe there’ll be some young belle walk out to make men wild

  Who is my beauty’s equal, though that my heart denies,

  But not the exact likeness, the simplicity of a child,

  And that proud look as though she had gazed into the burning sun,

  And all the shapely body no tittle gone astray,

  I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet God’s will be done,

  I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.

  A THOUGHT FROM PROPERTIUS

  She might, so noble from head

  To great shapely knees,

  The long flowing line,

  Have walked to the altar

  Through the holy images

  At Pallas Athene’s side,

  Or been fit spoil for a centaur

  Drunk with the unmixed wine.

  BROKEN DREAMS

  There is grey in your hair.

  Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath

  When you are passing;

  But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing

  Because it was your prayer

  Recovered him upon the bed of death.

  For your sole sake — that all heart’s ache have known,

  And given to others all heart’s ache,

  From meagre girlhood’s putting on

  Burdensome beauty — for your sole sake

  Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,

  So great her portion in that peace you make

  By merely walking in a room.

  Your beauty can but leave among us

  Vague memories, nothing but memories.

  A young man when the old men are done talking

  Will say to an old man, ‘Tell me of that lady

  The poet stubborn with his passion sang us

  When age might well have chilled his blood.’

  Vague memories, nothing but memories,

  But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed.

  The certainty that I shall see that lady

  Leaning or standing or walking

  In the first loveliness of womanhood,

  And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,

  Has set me muttering like a fool.

  You are more beautiful than any one

  And yet your body had a flaw:

  Your small hands were not beautiful,

  And I am afraid that you will run

  And paddle to the wrist

  In that mysterious, always brimming lake

  Where those that have obeyed the holy law

  Paddle and are perfect; leave unchanged

  The hands that I have kissed

  For old sakes’ sake.

  The last stroke of midnight dies.

  All day in the one chair

  From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged

  In rambling talk with an image of air:

  Vague memories, nothing but memories.

  A DEEP-SWORN VOW

  Others because you did not keep

  That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;

  Yet always when I look death in the face,

  When I clamber to the heights of sleep,

  Or when I grow excited with wine,

  Suddenly I meet your face.

  PRESENCES

  This night has been so strange that it seemed<
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  As if the hair stood up on my head.

  From going-down of the sun I have dreamed

  That women laughing, or timid or wild,

  In rustle of lace or silken stuff,

  Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read

  All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing

  Returned and yet unrequited love.

  They stood in the door and stood between

  My great wood lecturn and the fire

  Till I could hear their hearts beating:

  One is a harlot, and one a child

  That never looked upon man with desire,

  And one it may be a queen.

  THE BALLOON OF THE MIND

  Hands, do what you’re bid;

  Bring the balloon of the mind

  That bellies and drags in the wind

  Into its narrow shed.

  TO A SQUIRREL AT KYLE-NA-GNO

  Come play with me;

  Why should you run

  Through the shaking tree

  As though I’d a gun

  To strike you dead?

  When all I would do

  Is to scratch your head

  And let you go.

  ON BEING ASKED FOR A WAR POEM

  I think it better that in times like these

  A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth

  We have no gift to set a statesman right;

  He has had enough of meddling who can please

  A young girl in the indolence of her youth,

  Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

  IN MEMORY OF ALFRED POLLEXFEN

  Five-and-twenty years have gone

  Since old William Pollexfen

  Laid his strong bones down in death

  By his wife Elizabeth

  In the grey stone tomb he made.

  And after twenty years they laid

  In that tomb by him and her,

  His son George, the astrologer;

  And Masons drove from miles away

  To scatter the Acacia spray

  Upon a melancholy man

  Who had ended where his breath began.