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

by W. B. Yeats

  But that great queen, who more than half the night

  Had paced from door to fire and fire to door.

  Though now in her old age, in her young age

  She had been beautiful in that old way

  That’s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone,

  And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all

  But Soft beauty and indolent desire.

  She could have called over the rim of the world

  Whatever woman’s lover had hit her fancy,

  And yet had been great-bodied and great-limbed,

  Fashioned to be the mother of strong children;

  And she’d had lucky eyes and high heart,

  And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,

  At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,

  Sudden and laughing.

  O unquiet heart,

  Why do you praise another, praising her,

  As if there were no tale but your own tale

  Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound?

  Have I not bid you tell of that great queen

  Who has been buried some two thousand years?

  When night was at its deepest, a wild goose

  Cried from the porter’s lodge, and with long clamour’

  Shook the ale-horns and shields upon their hooks;

  But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power

  Had filled the house with Druid heaviness;

  And wondering who of the many-changing Sidhe

  Had come as in the old times to counsel her,

  Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall, being old,

  To that small chamber by the outer gate.

  The porter slept, although he sat upright

  With still and stony limbs and open eyes.

  Maeve waited, and when that ear-piercing noise

  Broke from his parted lips and broke again,

  She laid a hand on either of his shoulders,

  And shook him wide awake, and bid him say

  Who of the wandering many-changing ones

  Had troubled his sleep. But all he had to say

  Was that, the air being heavy and the dogs

  More still than they had been for a good month,

  He had fallen asleep, and, though he had dreamed nothing,

  He could remember when he had had fine dreams.

  It was before the time of the great war

  Over the White-Horned Bull and the Brown Bull.

  She turned away; he turned again to sleep

  That no god troubled now, and, wondering

  What matters were afoot among the Sidhe,

  Maeve walked through that great hall, and with a sigh

  Lifted the curtain of her sleeping-room,

  Remembering that she too had seemed divine

  To many thousand eyes, and to her own

  One that the generations had long waited

  That work too difficult for mortal hands

  Might be accomplished, Bunching the curtain up

  She saw her husband Ailell sleeping there,

  And thought of days when he’d had a straight body,

  And of that famous Fergus, Nessa’s husband,

  Who had been the lover of her middle life.

  Suddenly Ailell spoke out of his sleep,

  And not with his own voice or a man’s voice,

  But with the burning, live, unshaken voice

  Of those that, it may be, can never age.

  He said, ‘High Queen of Cruachan and Magh Ai,

  A king of the Great Plain would speak with you.’

  And with glad voice Maeve answered him, ‘What king

  Of the far-wandering shadows has come to me,

  As in the old days when they would come and go

  About my threshold to counsel and to help?’

  The parted lips replied, ‘I seek your help,

  For I am Aengus, and I am crossed in love.’

  ‘How may a mortal whose life gutters out

  Help them that wander with hand clasping hand,

  Their haughty images that cannot wither,

  For all their beauty’s like a hollow dream,

  Mirrored in streams that neither hail nor rain

  Nor the cold North has troubled?’

  He replied,

  ‘I am from those rivers and I bid you call

  The children of the Maines out of sleep,

  And set them digging under Bual’s hill.

  We shadows, while they uproot his earthy housc,

  Will overthrow his shadows and carry off

  Caer, his blue-eyed daughter that I love.

  I helped your fathers when they built these walls,

  And I would have your help in my great need,

  Queen of high Cruachan.’

  ‘I obey your will

  With speedy feet and a most thankful heart:

  For you have been, O Aengus of the birds,

  Our giver of good counsel and good luck.’

  And with a groan, as if the mortal breath

  Could but awaken sadly upon lips

  That happier breath had moved, her husband turned

  Face downward, tossing in a troubled sleep;

  But Maeve, and not with a slow feeble foot,

  Came to the threshold of the painted house

  Where her grandchildren slept, and cried aloud,

  Until the pillared dark began to stir

  With shouting and the clang of unhooked arms.

  She told them of the many-changing ones;

  And all that night, and all through the next day

  To middle night, they dug into the hill.

  At middle night great cats with silver claws,

  Bodies of shadow and blind eyes like pearls,

  Came up out of the hole, and red-eared hounds

  With long white bodies came out of the air

  Suddenly, and ran at them and harried them.

  The Maines’ children dropped their spades, and stood

  With quaking joints and terror-stricken faces,

  Till Maeve called out, ‘These are but common men.

  The Maines’ children have not dropped their spades

  Because Earth, crazy for its broken power,

  Casts up a Show and the winds answer it

  With holy shadows.’ Her high heart was glad,

  And when the uproar ran along the grass

  She followed with light footfall in the midst,

  Till it died out where an old thorn-tree stood.

  Friend of these many years, you too had stood

  With equal courage in that whirling rout;

  For you, although you’ve not her wandering heart,

  Have all that greatness, and not hers alone,

  For there is no high story about queens

  In any ancient book but tells of you;

  And when I’ve heard how they grew old and died,

  Or fell into unhappiness, I’ve said,

  ‘She will grow old and die, and she has wept!’

  And when I’d write it out anew, the words,

  Half crazy with the thought, She too has wept!

  Outrun the measure.

  I’d tell of that great queen

  Who stood amid a silence by the thorn

  Until two lovers came out of the air

  With bodies made out of soft fire. The one,

  About whose face birds wagged their fiery wings,

  Said, ‘Aengus and his sweetheart give their thanks

  To Maeve and to Maeve’s household, owing all

  In owing them the bride-bed that gives peace.’

  Then Maeve: ‘O Aengus, Master of all lovers,

  A thousand years ago you held high ralk

  With the first kings of many-pillared Cruachan.

  O when will you grow weary?’

  They had vanished,

  But our of the dark air over her head there came

  A murmur of soft words and
meeting lips.

  BAILE AND AILLINN

  ARGUMENT.

  Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land among the dead, told to each a story of the other’s death, so that their hearts were broken and they died.

  I HARDLY hear the curlew cry,

  Nor thegrey rush when the wind is high,

  Before my thoughts begin to run

  On the heir of Uladh, Buan’s son,

  Baile, who had the honey mouth;

  And that mild woman of the south,

  Aillinn, who was King Lugaidh’s heir.

  Their love was never drowned in care

  Of this or that thing, nor grew cold

  Because their hodies had grown old.

  Being forbid to marry on earth,

  They blossomed to immortal mirth.

  About the time when Christ was born,

  When the long wars for the White Horn

  And the Brown Bull had not yet come,

  Young Baile Honey Mouth, whom some

  Called rather Baile Little-Land,

  Rode out of Emain with a band

  Of harpers and young men; and they

  Imagined, as they struck the way

  To many-pastured Muirthemne,

  That all things fell out happily,

  And there, for all that fools had said,

  Baile and Aillinn would be wed.

  They found an old man running there:

  He had ragged long grass-coloured hair;

  He had knees that stuck out of his hose;

  He had puddle-water in his shoes;

  He had half a cloak to keep him dry,

  Although he had a squirrel’s eye.

  wandering hirds and rushy beds,

  You put such folly in our heads

  With all this crying in the wind,

  No common love is to our mind,

  And our poor kate or Nan is less

  Than any whose unhappiness

  Awoke the harp-strings long ago.

  Yet they that know all things hut know

  That all this life can give us is

  A child’s laughter, a woman’s kiss.

  Who was it put so great a scorn

  In thegrey reeds that night and morn

  Are trodden and broken hy the herds,

  And in the light bodies of birds

  The north wind tumbles to and fro

  And pinches among hail and snow?

  That runner said: ‘I am from the south;

  I run to Baile Honey-Mouth,

  To tell him how the girl Aillinn

  Rode from the country of her kin,

  And old and young men rode with her:

  For all that country had been astir

  If anybody half as fair

  Had chosen a husband anywhere

  But where it could see her every day.

  When they had ridden a little way

  An old man caught the horse’s head

  With: ‘‘You must home again, and wed

  With somebody in your own land.’’

  A young man cried and kissed her hand,

  ‘‘O lady, wed with one of us’’;

  And when no face grew piteous

  For any gentle thing she spake,

  She fell and died of the heart-break.’

  Because a lover’s heart s worn out,

  Being tumbled and blown about

  By its own blind imagining,

  And will believe that anything

  That is bad enough to be true, is true,

  Baile’s heart was broken in two;

  And he, being laid upon green boughs,

  Was carried to the goodly house

  Where the Hound of Uladh sat before

  The brazen pillars of his door,

  His face bowed low to weep the end

  Of the harper’s daughter and her friend

  For athough years had passed away

  He always wept them on that day,

  For on that day they had been betrayed;

  And now that Honey-Mouth is laid

  Under a cairn of sleepy stone

  Before his eyes, he has tears for none,

  Although he is carrying stone, but two

  For whom the cairn’s but heaped anew.

  We hold, because our memory is

  Sofull of that thing and of this,

  That out of sight is out of mind.

  But the grey rush under the wind

  And the grey bird with crooked bill

  rave such long memories that they still

  Remember Deirdre and her man;

  And when we walk with Kate or Nan

  About the windy water-side,

  Our hearts can Fear the voices chide.

  How could we be so soon content,

  Who know the way that Naoise went?

  And they have news of Deirdre’s eyes,

  Who being lovely was so wise —

  Ah! wise, my heart knows well how wise.

  Now had that old gaunt crafty one,

  Gathering his cloak about him, mn

  Where Aillinn rode with waiting-maids,

  Who amid leafy lights and shades

  Dreamed of the hands that would unlace

  Their bodices in some dim place

  When they had come to the matriage-bed,

  And harpers, pacing with high head

  As though their music were enough

  To make the savage heart of love

  Grow gentle without sorrowing,

  Imagining and pondering

  Heaven knows what calamity;

  ‘Another’s hurried off,’ cried he,

  ‘From heat and cold and wind and wave;

  They have heaped the stones above his grave

  In Muirthemne, and over it

  In changeless Ogham letters writ —

  Baile, that was of Rury’s seed.

  But the gods long ago decreed

  No waiting-maid should ever spread

  Baile and Aillinn’s marriage-bed,

  For they should clip and clip again

  Where wild bees hive on the Great Plain.

  Therefore it is but little news

  That put this hurry in my shoes.’

  Then seeing that he scarce had spoke

  Before her love-worn heart had broke.

  He ran and laughed until he came

  To that high hill the herdsmen name

  The Hill Seat of Laighen, because

  Some god or king had made the laws

  That held the land together there,

  In old times among the clouds of the air.

  That old man climbed; the day grew dim;

  Two swans came flying up to him,

  Linked by a gold chain each to each,

  And with low murmuring laughing speech

  Alighted on the windy grass.

  They knew him: his changed body was

  Tall, proud and ruddy, and light wings

  Were hovering over the harp-strings

  That Edain, Midhir’s wife, had wove

  In the hid place, being crazed by love.

  What shall I call them? fish that swim,

  Scale rubbing scale where light is dim

  By a broad water-lily leaf;

  Or mice in the one wheaten sheaf

  Forgotten at the threshing-place;

  Or birds lost in the one clear space

  Of morning light in a dim sky;

  Or, it may be, the eyelids of one eye,

  Or the door-pillars of one house,

  Or two sweet blossoming apple-boughs

  That have one shadow on the ground;

  Or the two strings that made one sound

  Where that wise harper’s finger ran.

  For this young girl and this young man

  Have happiness without an end,

  Because they have made so good a friend.

  They know all wonders, for they pass


  The towery gates of Gorias,

  And Findrias and Falias,

  And long-forgotten Murias,

  Among the giant kings whose hoard,

  Cauldron and spear and stone and sword,

  Was robbed before earth gave the wheat;

  Wandering from broken street to street

  They come where some huge watcher is,

  And tremble with their love and kiss.

  They know undying things, for they

  Wander where earth withers away,

  Though nothing troubles the great streams

  But light from the pale stars, and gleams

  From the holy orchards, where there is none

  But fruit that is of precious stone,

  Or apples of the sun and moon.

  What were our praise to them? They eat

  Quiet’s wild heart, like daily meat;

  Who when night thickens are afloat

  On dappled skins in a glass boat,

  Far out under a windless sky;

  While over them birds of Aengus fly,

  And over the tiller and the prow,

  And waving white wings to and fro

  Awaken wanderings of light air

  To stir their coverlet and their hair.

  And poets found, old writers say,

  A yew tree where his body lay;

  But a wild apple hid the grass

  With its sweet blossom where hers was,

  And being in good heart, because

  A better time had come again

  After the deaths of many men,

  And that long fighting at the ford,

  They wrote on tablets of thin board,

  Made of the apple and the yew,

  All the love stories that they knew.

  Let rush and hird cry out their fill

  Of the harper’s daughter if they will,

  Beloved, I am not afraid of her.

  She is not wiser nor lovelier,

  And you are more high of heart than she,

  For all her wanderings over-sea;

  But I’d have bird and rush forget

  Those other two; for never yet

  Has lover lived, but longed to wive

  Like them that are no more alive.

  IN THE SEVEN WOODS

  This collection of poems was first published in 1903 by the poet’s sister Elizabeth Yeats. Critics now class the anthology as being the first book of Yeats’ ‘middle period’, in which he laid aside his previous Romantic ideals in preference for pre-Raphaelite imagery. The poems also exhibit a more spare style, with an anti-romantic poetic approach.

  The Dun Emer Press with Elizabeth Yeats working the hand press, 1903

  CONTENTS

  IN THE SEVEN WOODS.

  THE OLD AGE OF QUEEN MAEVE.