First he loved her, then he left her,
And she lost her honest name.
Then she ran away to London,
For to hide her grief and shame;
There she met another squire,
And she lost her name again.
See her riding in her carriage,
In the Park and all so gay:
All the nibs and nobby persons
Come to pass the time of day.
See the little old-world village
Where her aged parents live,
Drinking the champagne she sends them;
But they never can forgive.
In the rich man’s arms she flutters,
Like a bird with broken wing:
First he loved her, then he left her,
And she hasn’t got a ring.
See him in the splendid mansion,
Entertaining with the best,
While the girl that he has ruined,
Entertains a sordid guest.
See him in the House of Commons,
Making laws to put down crime,
While the victim of his passions
Trails her way through mud and slime.
Standing on the bridge at midnight,
She says; ‘Farewell, blighted Love.’
There’s a scream, a splash – Good Heavens!
What is she a-doing of?
Then they drag her from the river,
Water from her clothes they wrang,
For they thought that she was drownded;
But the corpse got up and sang:
‘It’s the same the whole world over;
It’s the poor that gets the blame,
It’s the rich that gets the pleasure.
Isn’t it a blooming shame?’
ANON
The Woman of Llyn y Fan’s Call to Her Cattle
Spotted cow that’s light and freckled,
Dotted cow with white bespeckled,
Mottled cow so brightly deckled
Plod homewards now.
Kerry sheep long held in fold,
Merry sheep dong-belled with gold,
Fairy sheep song-spelled of old,
Drift homewards now.
Goat on high that’s dry of coat,
Goat with eye so sly to note,
Goat whose cry is wry in throat,
Skip homewards now.
Horses tall and gay and bobtailed,
Horses small and bay and lobtailed,
Horses all, though grey and hobnailed,
Clop homewards now.
ANON
translated by Gwyn Jones
Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad-House
Oh that my soul a marrow-bone might seize!
For the old egg of my desire is broken,
Spilled is the pearly white and spilled the yolk, and
As the mild melancholy contents grease
My path the shorn lamb baas like bumblebees.
Time’s trashy purse is as a taken token
Or like a thrilling recitation, spoken
By mournful mouths filled full of mirth and cheese.
And yet, why should I clasp the earthful urn?
Or find the frittered fig that felt the fast?
Or choose to chase the cheese around the churn?
Or swallow any pill from out the past?
Ah, no Love, not while your hot kisses burn
Like a potato riding on the blast.
ANON
Symphony in Yellow
An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.
Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
OSCAR WILDE
The Motor Bus
What is this that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the swell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!
Implet in the Corn and High
Terror me Motoris Bi:
Bo Motori clamitabo
Ne Motore caeder a Bo –
Dative be or Ablative
So thou only let us live:
Whither shall thy victims flee?
Spare us, spare us, Motor Be!
Thus I sang; and still anigh
Came in hordes Motores Bi,
Et complebat omne forum
Copia Motorum Borum.
How shall wretches live like us
Cincti Bis Motoribus?
Domine, defende nos
Contra nos Motores Bos!
A. D. GODLEY
Soliloquy of a Maiden Aunt
The ladies bow, and partners set,
And turn around and pirouette
And trip the Lancers.
But no one seeks my ample chair,
Or asks me with persuasive air
To join the dancers.
They greet me, as I sit alone
Upon my solitary throne,
And pass politely.
Yet mine could keep the measured beat,
As surely as the youngest feet,
And tread as lightly.
No other maiden had my skill,
In our old homestead on the hill –
That merry May-time
When Allan closed the flagging ball,
And danced with me before them all,
Until the day-time.
Again I laugh, and step alone,
And curtsey low as on my own
His strong hand closes.
But Allan now seeks staid delight,
His son there, brought my niece to-night
These early roses.
Time orders well, we have our Spring,
Our songs, and may-flower gathering,
Our love and laughter.
And children chatter all the while,
And leap the brook and climb the stile
And follow after.
And yet – the step of Allan’s son,
Is not as light as was the one
That went before it.
And that old lace, I think, falls down
Less softly on Priscilla’s gown
Than when I wore it.
DOLLIE RADFORD
‘When first my way to fair I took’
When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse had I,
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.
Now times are altered: if I care
To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here and here’s the fair,
But where’s the lost young man?
– To think that two and two are four
And neither five nor three
The heart of man has long been sore
And long ’tis like to be.
A. E. HOUSMAN
‘Here dead lie we because we did not choose’
Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
A. E. HOUSMAN
Tam i’ the Kirk
O Jean, my Jean, when the bell ca’s the congregation
Owre valley an’ hill wi’ the ding frae its iron mou’,
When a’body’s thochts is set on his ain salvation,
Mine’s set on you.
There’s a reid rose lies on the Buik o’ the Word ’afore ye
That was growin’ braw on its bush at the keek o’ day,
But the lad that pu’d yon flower i’ the mornin�
�s glory,
He canna pray.
He canna pray; but there’s nane i’ the kirk will heed him
Whaur he sits sae still his lane at the side o’ the wa’,
For nane but the reid rose kens what my lassie gied him –
It an’ us twa!
He canna sing for the sang that his ain he’rt raises,
He canna see for the mist that’s afore his e’en,
And a voice drouns the hale o’ the psalms an’ the paraphrases,
Cryin’ ‘Jean! Jean! Jean!’
VIOLET JACOB
The Way Through the Woods
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods….
But there is no road through the woods.
RUDYARD KIPLING
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?
W. B. YEATS
The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
W. B. YEATS
No Second Troy
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
W. B. YEATS
Easter, 1916
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no
, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse –
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
W. B. YEATS
An Irish Airman Foresees his Death
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
W. B. YEATS
The Farmer’s Bride
The Map and the Clock Page 22