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

by W. B. Yeats

I said that she had danced heart’s truth,

  Drew a knife to strike him dead,

  I could but leave him to his fate;

  For no matter what is said

  They had all that had their hate;

  Love is like the lion’s tooth.

  Did he die or did she die?

  Seemed to die or died they both?

  God be with the times when I

  Cared not a thraneen for what chanced

  So that I had the limbs to try

  Such a dance as there was danced —

  Love is like the lion’s tooth.

  VIII - GIRL’S SONG

  I WENT out alone

  To sing a song or two,

  My fancy on a man,

  And you know who.

  Another came in sight

  That on a stick relied

  To hold himself upright;

  I sat and cried.

  And that was all my song —

  When everything is told,

  Saw I an old man young

  Or young man old?

  IX - YOUNG MAN’S SONG

  ‘SHE will change,’ I cried.

  ‘Into a withered crone.’

  The heart in my side,

  That so still had lain,

  In noble rage replied

  And beat upon the bone:

  ‘Uplift those eyes and throw

  Those glances unafraid:

  She would as bravely show

  Did all the fabric fade;

  No withered crone I saw

  Before the world was made.’

  Abashed by that report,

  For the heart cannot lie,

  I knelt in the dirt.

  And all shall bend the knee

  To my offended heart

  Until it pardon me.

  X - HER ANXIETY

  EARTH in beauty dressed

  Awaits returning spring.

  All true love must die,

  Alter at the best

  Into some lesser thing.

  Prove that I lie.

  Such body lovers have,

  Such exacting breath,

  That they touch or sigh.

  Every touch they give,

  Love is nearer death.

  Prove that I lie.

  XI - HIS CONFIDENCE

  UNDYING love to buy

  I wrote upon

  The corners of this eye

  All wrongs done.

  What payment were enough

  For undying love?

  I broke my heart in two

  So hard I struck.

  What matter? for I know

  That out of rock,

  Out of a desolate source,

  Love leaps upon its course.

  XII - LOVE’S LONELINESS

  OLD fathers, great-grandfathers,

  Rise as kindred should.

  If ever lover’s loneliness

  Came where you stood,

  Pray that Heaven protect us

  That protect your blood.

  The mountain throws a shadow,

  Thin is the moon’s horn;

  What did we remember

  Under the ragged thorn?

  Dread has followed longing,

  And our hearts are torn.

  XIII - HER DREAM

  I DREAMED as in my bed I lay,

  All night’s fathomless wisdom come,

  That I had shorn my locks away

  And laid them on Love’s lettered tomb:

  But something bore them out of sight

  In a great tumult of the air,

  And after nailed upon the night

  Berenice’s burning hair.

  XIV - HIS BARGAIN

  WHO talks of Plato’s spindle;

  What set it whirling round?

  Eternity may dwindle,

  Time is unwound,

  Dan and Jerry Lout

  Change their loves about.

  However they may take it,

  Before the thread began

  I made, and may not break it

  When the last thread has run,

  A bargain with that hair

  And all the windings there.

  XV - THREE THINGS

  ‘O CRUEL Death, give three things back,’

  Sang a bone upon the shore;

  ‘A child found all a child can lack,

  Whether of pleasure or of rest,

  Upon the abundance of my breast’:

  A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.

  ‘Three dear things that women know,’

  Sang a bhone upon the shore;

  ‘A man if I but held him so

  When my body was alive

  Found all the pleasure that life gave’:

  A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.

  ‘The third thing that I think of yet,’

  Sang a bone upon the shore,

  ‘Is that morning when I met

  Face to face my rightful man

  And did after stretch and yawn’:

  A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.

  XVI - LULLABY

  BELOVED, may your sleep be sound

  That have found it where you fed.

  What were all the world’s alarms

  To mighty paris when he found

  Sleep upon a golden bed

  That first dawn in Helen’s arms?

  Sleep, beloved, such a sleep

  As did that wild Tristram know

  When, the potion’s work being done,

  Roe could run or doe could leap

  Under oak and beechen bough,

  Roe could leap or doe could run;

  Such a sleep and sound as fell

  Upon Eurotas’ grassy bank

  When the holy bird, that there

  Accomplished his predestined will,

  From the limbs of Leda sank

  But not from her protecting care.

  XVII - AFTER LONG SILENCE

  SPEECH after long silence; it is right,

  All other lovers being estranged or dead,

  Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,

  The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,

  That we descant and yet again descant

  Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:

  Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young

  We loved each other and were ignorant.

  XVIII - MAD AS THE MIST AND SNOW

  BOLT and bar the shutter,

  For the foul winds blow:

  Our minds are at their best this night,

  And I seem to know

  That everything outside us is

  Mad as the mist and snow.

  Horace there by Homer stands,

  Plato stands below,

  And here is Tully’s open page.

  How many years ago

  Were you and I unlettered lads

  Mad as the mist and snow?

  You ask what makes me sigh, old friend,

  What makes me shudder so?

  I shudder and I sigh to think

  That even Cicero

  And many-minded Homer were

  Mad as the mist and snow.

  XIX - THOSE DANCING DAYS ARE GONE

  COME, let me sing into your ear;

  Those dancing days are gone,

  All that silk and satin gear;

  Crouch upon a stone,

  Wrapping that foul body up

  In as foul a rag:

  I carry the sun in a golden cup.

  The moon in a silver bag.

  Curse as you may I sing it through;

  What matter if the knave

  That the most could pleasure you,

  The children that he gave,

  Are somewhere sleeping like a top

  Under a marble flag?

  I carry the sun in a golden cup.

  The moon in a silver bag.

  I thought it out this very day.

  Noon upon the clock,

  A man may put pretenc
e away

  Who leans upon a stick,

  May sing, and sing until he drop,

  Whether to maid or hag:

  I carry the sun in a golden cup,

  The moon in a silver bag.

  XX - ‘I AM OF IRELAND’

  AM of Ireland,

  And the Holy Land of Ireland,

  And time runs on,’ cried she.

  ‘Come out of charity,

  Come dance with me in Ireland.’

  One man, one man alone

  In that outlandish gear,

  One solitary man

  Of all that rambled there

  Had turned his stately head.

  That is a long way off,

  And time runs on,’ he said,

  ‘And the night grows rough.’

  I am of Ireland,

  And the Holy Land of Ireland,

  And time runs on,’ cried she.

  ‘Come out of charity

  And dance with me in Ireland.’

  The fiddlers are all thumbs,

  Or the fiddle-string accursed,

  The drums and the kettledrums

  And the trumpets all are burst,

  And the trombone,’ cried he,

  ‘The trumpet and trombone,’

  And cocked a malicious eye,

  ‘But time runs on, runs on.’

  I am of Ireland,

  And the Holy Land of Ireland,

  And time runs on,’ cried she.

  ‘Come out of charity

  And dance with me in Ireland.’

  XXI - THE DANCER AT CRUACHAN AND CRO-PATRICK

  I, PROCLAIMING that there is

  Among birds or beasts or men

  One that is perfect or at peace.

  Danced on Cruachan’s windy plain,

  Upon Cro-patrick sang aloud;

  All that could run or leap or swim

  Whether in wood, water or cloud,

  Acclaiming, proclaiming, declaiming Him.

  XXII - TOM THE LUNATIC

  SANG old Tom the lunatic

  That sleeps under the canopy:

  ‘What change has put my thoughts astray

  And eyes that had s-o keen a sight?

  What has turned to smoking wick

  Nature’s pure unchanging light?

  ‘Huddon and Duddon and Daniel O’Leary.

  Holy Joe, the beggar-man,

  Wenching, drinking, still remain

  Or sing a penance on the road;

  Something made these eyeballs weary

  That blinked and saw them in a shroud.

  ‘Whatever stands in field or flood,

  Bird, beast, fish or man,

  Mare or stallion, cock or hen,

  Stands in God’s unchanging eye

  In all the vigour of its blood;

  In that faith I live or die.’

  XXIII - TOM AT CRUACHAN

  ON Cruachan’s plain slept he

  That must sing in a rhyme

  What most could shake his soul:

  ‘The stallion Eternit

  Mounted the mare of Time,

  ‘Gat the foal of the world.’

  XXIV - OLD TOM AGAIN

  THINGS out of perfection sail,

  And all their swelling canvas wear,

  Nor shall the self-begotten fail

  Though fantastic men suppose

  Building-yard and stormy shore,

  Winding-sheet and swaddling — clothes.

  XXV - THE DELPHIC ORACLE UPON PLOTINUS

  BEHOLD that great Plotinus swim,

  Buffeted by such seas;

  Bland Rhadamanthus beckons him,

  But the Golden Race looks dim,

  Salt blood blocks his eyes.

  Scattered on the level grass

  Or winding through the grove

  plato there and Minos pass,

  There stately Pythagoras

  And all the choir of Love.

  A WOMAN YOUNG AND OLD

  I

  FATHER AND CHILD

  SHE hears me strike the board and say

  That she is under ban

  Of all good men and women,

  Being mentioned with a man

  That has the worst of all bad names;

  And thereupon replies

  That his hair is beautiful,

  Cold as the March wind his eyes.

  II

  BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE

  IF I make the lashes dark

  And the eyes more bright

  And the lips more scarlet,

  Or ask if all be right

  From mirror after mirror,

  No vanity’s displayed:

  I’m looking for the face I had

  Before the world was made.

  What if I look upon a man

  As though on my beloved,

  And my blood be cold the while

  And my heart unmoved?

  Why should he think me cruel

  Or that he is betrayed?

  I’d have him love the thing that was

  Before the world was made.

  III

  A FIRST CONFESSION

  I ADMIT the briar

  Entangled in my hair

  Did not injure me;

  My blenching and trembling,

  Nothing but dissembling,

  Nothing but coquetry.

  I long for truth, and yet

  I cannot stay from that

  My better self disowns,

  For a man’s attention

  Brings such satisfaction

  To the craving in my bones.

  Brightness that I pull back

  From the Zodiac,

  Why those questioning eyes

  That are fixed upon me?

  What can they do but shun me

  If empty night replies?

  IV

  HER TRIUMPH

  I DID the dragon’s will until you came

  Because I had fancied love a casual

  Improvisation, or a settled game

  That followed if I let the kerchief fall:

  Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings

  And heavenly music if they gave it wit;

  And then you stood among the dragon-rings.

  I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it

  And broke the chain and set my ankles free,

  Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;

  And now we stare astonished at the sea,

  And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.

  V

  CONSOLATION

  O BUT there is wisdom

  In what the sages said;

  But stretch that body for a while

  And lay down that head

  Till I have told the sages

  Where man is comforted.

  How could passion run so deep

  Had I never thought

  That the crime of being born

  Blackens all our lot?

  But where the crime’s committed

  The crime can be forgot.

  VI

  CHOSEN

  THE lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much

  Struggling for an image on the track

  Of the whirling Zodiac.

  Scarce did he my body touch,

  Scarce sank he from the west

  Or found a subtetranean rest

  On the maternal midnight of my breast

  Before I had marked him on his northern way,

  And seemed to stand although in bed I lay.

  I struggled with the horror of daybreak,

  I chose it for my lot! If questioned on

  My utmost pleasure with a man

  By some new-married bride, I take

  That stillness for a theme

  Where his heart my heart did seem

  And both adrift on the miraculous stream

  Where — wrote a learned astrologer —

  The Zodiac is changed into a sphere.

  VII

  PARTING />
  He. Dear, I must be gone

  While night Shuts the eyes

  Of the household spies;

  That song announces dawn.

  She. No, night’s bird and love’s

  Bids all true lovers rest,

  While his loud song reproves

  The murderous stealth of day.

  He. Daylight already flies

  From mountain crest to crest

  She. That light is from the moom.

  He. That bird...

  She. Let him sing on,

  I offer to love’s play

  My dark declivities.

  VIII

  HER VISION IN THE WOOD

  DRY timber under that rich foliage,

  At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood,

  Too old for a man’s love I stood in rage

  Imagining men. Imagining that I could

  A greater with a lesser pang assuage

  Or but to find if withered vein ran blood,

  I tore my body that its wine might cover

  Whatever could rccall the lip of lover.

  And after that I held my fingers up,

  Stared at the wine-dark nail, or dark that ran

  Down every withered finger from the top;

  But the dark changed to red, and torches shone,

  And deafening music shook the leaves; a troop

  Shouldered a litter with a wounded man,

  Or smote upon the string and to the sound

  Sang of the beast that gave the fatal wound.

  All stately women moving to a song

  With loosened hair or foreheads grief-distraught,

  It seemed a Quattrocento painter’s throng,

  A thoughtless image of Mantegna’s thought —

  Why should they think that are for ever young?

  Till suddenly in grief’s contagion caught,

  I stared upon his blood-bedabbled breast

  And sang my malediction with the rest.

  That thing all blood and mire, that beast-torn wreck,

  Half turned and fixed a glazing eye on mine,

  And, though love’s bitter-sweet had all come back,

  Those bodies from a picture or a coin

  Nor saw my body fall nor heard it shriek,

  Nor knew, drunken with singing as with wine,

  That they had brought no fabulous symbol there

  But my heart’s victim and its torturer.

  IX

  A LAST CONFESSION

  WHAT lively lad most pleasured me