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

by W. B. Yeats

  That come into my soul and escape

  Confusion of the bed,

  Or those begotten or unbegotten

  Perning in a band,

  I bend my body to the spade

  Or grope with a dirty hand.

  Or those begotten or unbegotten,

  For I would not recall

  Some that being unbegotten

  Are not individual,

  But copy some one action,

  Moulding it of dust or sand,

  I bend my body to the spade

  Or grope with a dirty hand.

  An old ghost’s thoughts are lightning,

  To follow is to die;

  Poetry and music I have banished,

  But the stupidity

  Of root, shoot, blossom or clay

  Makes no demand.

  I bend my body to the spade

  Or grope with a dirty hand.

  THOSE IMAGES

  WHAT if I bade you leave

  The cavern of the mind?

  There’s better exercise

  In the sunlight and wind.

  I never bade you go

  To Moscow or to Rome.

  Renounce that drudgery,

  Call the Muses home.

  Seek those images

  That constitute the wild,

  The lion and the virgin,

  The harlot and the child

  Find in middle air

  An eagle on the wing,

  Recognise the five

  That make the Muses sing.

  THE MUNICIPAL GALLERY REVISITED

  AROUND me the images of thirty years:

  An ambush; pilgrims at the water-side;

  Casement upon trial, half hidden by the bars,

  Guarded; Griffith staring in hysterical pride;

  Kevin O’Higgins’ countenance that wears

  A gentle questioning look that cannot hide

  A soul incapable of remorse or rest;

  A revolutionary soldier kneeling to be blessed;

  An Abbot or Archbishop with an upraised hand

  Blessing the Tricolour. ‘This is not,’ I say,

  ‘The dead Ireland of my youth, but an Ireland

  The poets have imagined, terrible and gay.’

  Before a woman’s portrait suddenly I stand,

  Beautiful and gentle in her Venetian way.

  I met her all but fifty years ago

  For twenty minutes in some studio.

  III

  Heart-smitten with emotion I Sink down,

  My heart recovering with covered eyes;

  Wherever I had looked I had looked upon

  My permanent or impermanent images:

  Augusta Gregory’s son; her sister’s son,

  Hugh Lane, ‘onlie begetter’ of all these;

  Hazel Lavery living and dying, that tale

  As though some ballad-singer had sung it all;

  Mancini’s portrait of Augusta Gregory,

  ‘Greatest since Rembrandt,’ according to John Synge;

  A great ebullient portrait certainly;

  But where is the brush that could show anything

  Of all that pride and that humility?

  And I am in despair that time may bring

  Approved patterns of women or of men

  But not that selfsame excellence again.

  My mediaeval knees lack health until they bend,

  But in that woman, in that household where

  Honour had lived so long, all lacking found.

  Childless I thought, ‘My children may find here

  Deep-rooted things,’ but never foresaw its end,

  And now that end has come I have not wept;

  No fox can foul the lair the badger swept —

  VI

  (An image out of Spenser and the common tongue).

  John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought

  All that we did, all that we said or sang

  Must come from contact with the soil, from that

  Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.

  We three alone in modern times had brought

  Everything down to that sole test again,

  Dream of the noble and the beggar-man.

  VII

  And here’s John Synge himself, that rooted man,

  ‘Forgetting human words,’ a grave deep face.

  You that would judge me, do not judge alone

  This book or that, come to this hallowed place

  Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;

  Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;

  Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,

  And say my glory was I had such friends.

  ARE YOU CONTENT?

  I CALL on those that call me son,

  Grandson, or great-grandson,

  On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts,

  To judge what I have done.

  Have I, that put it into words,

  Spoilt what old loins have sent?

  Eyes spiritualised by death can judge,

  I cannot, but I am not content.

  He that in Sligo at Drumcliff

  Set up the old stone Cross,

  That red-headed rector in County Down,

  A good man on a horse,

  Sandymount Corbets, that notable man

  Old William pollexfen,

  The smuggler Middleton, Butlers far back,

  Half legendary men.

  Infirm and aged I might stay

  In some good company,

  I who have always hated work,

  Smiling at the sea,

  Or demonstrate in my own life

  What Robert Browning meant

  By an old hunter talking with Gods;

  But I am not content.

  Poems from ON THE BOILER

  CONTENTS

  WHY SHOULD NOT OLD MEN BE MAD?

  CRAZY JANE ON THE MOUNTAIN

  A STATESMAN’S HOLIDAY

  WHY SHOULD NOT OLD MEN BE MAD?

  WHY should not old men be mad?

  Some have known a likely lad

  That had a sound fly-fisher’s wrist

  Turn to a drunken journalist;

  A girl that knew all Dante once

  Live to bear children to a dunce;

  A Helen of social welfare dream,

  Climb on a wagonette to scream.

  Some think it a matter of course that chance

  Should starve good men and bad advance,

  That if their neighbours figured plain,

  As though upon a lighted screen,

  No single story would they find

  Of an unbroken happy mind,

  A finish worthy of the start.

  Young men know nothing of this sort,

  Observant old men know it well;

  And when they know what old books tell

  And that no better can be had,

  Know why an old man should be mad.

  CRAZY JANE ON THE MOUNTAIN

  I AM tired of cursing the Bishop,

  (Said Crazy Jane)

  Nine books or nine hats

  Would not make him a man.

  I have found something worse

  To meditate on.

  A King had some beautiful cousins.

  But where are they gone?

  Battered to death in a cellar,

  And he stuck to his throne.

  Last night I lay on the mountain.

  (Said Crazy Jane)

  There in a two-horsed carriage

  That on two wheels ran

  Great-bladdered Emer sat.

  Her violent man

  Cuchulain sat at her side;

  Thereupon’

  Propped upon my two knees,

  I kissed a stone

  I lay stretched out in the dirt

  And I cried tears down.

  A STATESMAN’S HOLIDAY

  I lived among great houses,

  Riches drove out rank,

>   Base drove out the better blood,

  And mind and body shrank.

  No Oscar ruled the table,

  But I’d a troop of friends

  That knowing better talk had gone

  Talked of odds and ends.

  Some knew what ailed the world

  But never said a thing,

  So I have picked a better trade

  And night and morning sing:

  Tall dames go walking in grass-green Avalon.

  Am I a great Lord Chancellor

  That slept upon the Sack?

  Commanding officer that tore

  The khaki from his back?

  Or am I de Valera,

  Or the King of Greece,

  Or the man that made the motors?

  Ach, call me what you please!

  Here’s a Montenegrin lute,

  And its old sole string

  Makes me sweet music

  And I delight to sing:

  Tall dames go walking in grass-green Avalon.

  With boys and girls about him.

  With any sort of clothes,

  With a hat out of fashion,

  With Old patched shoes,

  With a ragged bandit cloak,

  With an eye like a hawk,

  With a stiff straight back,

  With a strutting turkey walk.

  With a bag full of pennies,

  With a monkey on a chain,

  With a great cock’s feather,

  With an old foul tune.

  Tall dames go walking in grass-green Avalon.

  LAST POEMS

  CONTENTS

  UNDER BEN BULBEN

  THREE SONGS TO THE ONE BURDEN

  THE BLACK TOWER

  CUCHULAIN COMFORTED

  THREE MARCHING SONGS

  IN TARA’S HALLS

  THE STATUES

  NEWS FOR THE DELPHIC ORACLE

  LONG-LEGGED FLY

  A BRONZE HEAD

  A STICK OF INCENSE

  HOUND VOICE

  JOHN KINSELLA’S LAMENT FOR MR. MARY MOORE

  HIGH TALK

  THE APPARITIONS

  A NATIVITY

  MAN AND THE ECHO

  THE CIRCUS ANIMALS’ DESERTION

  POLITICS

  UNDER BEN BULBEN

  I

  SWEAR by what the sages spoke

  Round the Mareotic Lake

  That the Witch of Atlas knew,

  Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.

  Swear by those horsemen, by those women

  Complexion and form prove superhuman,

  That pale, long-visaged company

  That air in immortality

  Completeness of their passions won;

  Now they ride the wintry dawn

  Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.

  Here s the gist of what they mean.

  II

  Many times man lives and dies

  Between his two eternities,

  That of race and that of soul,

  And ancient Ireland knew it all.

  Whether man die in his bed

  Or the rifle knocks him dead,

  A brief parting from those dear

  Is the worst man has to fear.

  Though grave-diggers’ toil is long,

  Sharp their spades, their muscles strong.

  They but thrust their buried men

  Back in the human mind again.

  III

  You that Mitchel’s prayer have heard,

  ‘Send war in our time, O Lord!’

  Know that when all words are said

  And a man is fighting mad,

  Something drops from eyes long blind,

  He completes his partial mind,

  For an instant stands at ease,

  Laughs aloud, his heart at peace.

  Even the wisest man grows tense

  With some sort of violence

  Before he can accomplish fate,

  Know his work or choose his mate.

  IV

  Poet and sculptor, do the work,

  Nor let the modish painter shirk

  What his great forefathers did.

  Bring the soul of man to God,

  Make him fill the cradles right.

  Measurement began our might:

  Forms a stark Egyptian thought,

  Forms that gentler phidias wrought.

  Michael Angelo left a proof

  On the Sistine Chapel roof,

  Where but half-awakened Adam

  Can disturb globe-trotting Madam

  Till her bowels are in heat,

  proof that there’s a purpose set

  Before the secret working mind:

  Profane perfection of mankind.

  Quattrocento put in paint

  On backgrounds for a God or Saint

  Gardens where a soul’s at ease;

  Where everything that meets the eye,

  Flowers and grass and cloudless sky,

  Resemble forms that are or seem

  When sleepers wake and yet still dream.

  And when it’s vanished still declare,

  With only bed and bedstead there,

  That heavens had opened.

  Gyres run on;

  When that greater dream had gone

  Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude,

  Prepared a rest for the people of God,

  Palmer’s phrase, but after that

  Confusion fell upon our thought.

  V

  Irish poets, earn your trade,

  Sing whatever is well made,

  Scorn the sort now growing up

  All out of shape from toe to top,

  Their unremembering hearts and heads

  Base-born products of base beds.

  Sing the peasantry, and then

  Hard-riding country gentlemen,

  The holiness of monks, and after

  Porter-drinkers’ randy laughter;

  Sing the lords and ladies gay

  That were beaten into the clay

  Through seven heroic centuries;

  Cast your mind on other days

  That we in coming days may be

  Still the indomitable Irishry.

  VI

  Under bare Ben Bulben’s head

  In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.

  An ancestor was rector there

  Long years ago, a church stands near,

  By the road an ancient cross.

  No marble, no conventional phrase;

  On limestone quarried near the spot

  By his command these words are cut:

  Cast a cold eye

  On life, on death.

  Horseman, pass by!

  THREE SONGS TO THE ONE BURDEN

  THE Roaring Tinker if you like,

  But Mannion is my name,

  And I beat up the common sort

  And think it is no shame.

  The common breeds the common,

  A lout begets a lout,

  So when I take on half a score

  I knock their heads about.

  From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

  All Mannions come from Manannan,

  Though rich on every shore

  He never lay behind four walls

  He had such character,

  Nor ever made an iron red

  Nor soldered pot or pan;

  His roaring and his ranting

  Best please a wandering man.

  From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

  Could Crazy Jane put off old age

  And ranting time renew,

  Could that old god rise up again

  We’d drink a can or two,

  And out and lay our leadership

  On country and on town,

  Throw likely couples into bed

  And knock the others down.

  From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

  II

  My name is Henry Middleton,
r />   I have a small demesne,

  A small forgotten house that’s set

  On a storm-bitten green.

  I scrub its floors and make my bed,

  I cook and change my plate,

  The post and garden-boy alone

  Have keys to my old gate.

  From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

  Though I have locked my gate on them,

  I pity all the young,

  I know what devil’s trade they learn

  From those they live among,

  Their drink, their pitch-and-toss by day,

  Their robbery by night;

  The wisdom of the people’s gone,

  How can the young go straight?

  From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

  When every Sunday afternoon

  On the Green Lands I walk

  And wear a coat in fashion.

  Memories of the talk

  Of henwives and of queer old men

  Brace me and make me strong;

  There’s not a pilot on the perch

  Knows I have lived so long.

  From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

  III

  Come gather round me, players all:

  Come praise Nineteen-Sixteen,

  Those from the pit and gallery

  Or from the painted scene

  That fought in the Post Office

  Or round the City Hall,

  praise every man that came again,

  Praise every man that fell.

  From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

  Who was the first man shot that day?

  The player Connolly,

  Close to the City Hall he died;

  Catriage and voice had he;

  He lacked those years that go with skill,

  But later might have been

  A famous, a brilliant figure

  Before the painted scene.

  From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

  Some had no thought of victory

  But had gone out to die

  That Ireland’s mind be greater,

  Her heart mount up on high;

  And yet who knows what’s yet to come?

  For patrick pearse had said