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

by W. B. Yeats

  BAILE AND AILLINN.

  THE ARROW.

  THE FOLLY OF BEING COMFORTED.

  THE WITHERING OF THE BOUGHS.

  ADAM’S CURSE.

  THE SONG OF RED HANRAHAN.

  THE OLD MEN ADMIRING THEMSELVES IN THE WATER.

  UNDER THE MOON.

  THE PLAYERS ASK FOR A BLESSING ON THE PSALTERIES AND THEMSELVES.

  THE RIDER FROM THE NORTH.

  Yeats, 1903

  IN THE SEVEN WOODS.

  I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods

  Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees

  Hum in the lime tree flowers; and put away

  The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness

  That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile

  Tara uprooted, and new commonness

  Upon the throne and crying about the streets

  And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,

  Because it is alone of all things happy.

  I am contented for I know that Quiet

  Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart

  Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,

  Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs

  A cloudy quiver over Parc-na-Lee.

  August, 1902.

  THE OLD AGE OF QUEEN MAEVE.

  Maeve the great queen was pacing to and fro,

  Between the walls covered with beaten bronze,

  In her high house at Cruachan; the long hearth,

  Flickering with ash and hazel, but half showed

  Where the tired horse-boys lay upon the rushes,

  Or on the benches underneath the walls,

  In comfortable sleep; all living slept

  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 a 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 Mag 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

  By rivers where nor rain nor hail has dimmed

  Their haughty images, that cannot fade

  Although their beauty’s like a hollow dream.’

  ‘I come from the undimmed rivers to bid you call

  The children of the Maines out of sleep,

  And set them digging into Anbual’s hill.

  We shadows, while they uproot his earthy house,

  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 strucken 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 hig
h 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 talk

  With the first kings of many pillared Cruachan.

  O when will you grow weary.’

  They had vanished,

  But out 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 be

  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 the grey rush when wind is high,

  Before my thoughts begin to run

  On the heir of Ulad, Buan’s son,

  Baile who had the honey mouth,

  And that mild woman of the south,

  Aillinn, who was King Lugaid’s heir.

  Their love was never drowned in care

  Of this or that thing, nor grew cold

  Because their bodies 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-yellow 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.

  O wandering birds 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 but know

  That all life had to give us is

  A child’s laughter, a woman’s kiss.

  Who was it put so great a scorn

  In the grey reeds that night and morn

  Are trodden and broken by the herds,

  And in the light bodies of birds

  That 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 Ulad 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 although 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

  So full 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

  Have 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 heart can hear 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, run

  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 marriage bed;

  And harpers pondering with bowed head

  A music that had thought enough

  Of the ebb of all things to make love

  Grow gentle without sorrowings;

  And leather-coated men with slings

  Who peered about on every side;

  And amid leafy light he cried,

  ‘He is well out of 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.’

  And hurrying to the south he came

  To that high
hill the herdsmen name

  The Hill Seat of Leighin, 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 Etain, 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