Public-domain ebook
by W. B. Yeats
Language: en389 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Poetry·British Literature·Nobel Prizes in Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #31959.
The opening · free to read
'Tis All Souls' Night and the great Christ Church bell, And many a lesser bell, sound through the room, For it is now midnight; And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come, For it is a ghost's right, His element is so fine Being sharpened by his death, To drink from the wine-breath While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
I need some mind that, if the cannon sound From every quarter of the world, can stay Wound in mind's pondering, As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound; Because I have a marvellous thing to say, A certain marvellous thing None but the living mock, Though not for sober ear; It may be all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
H--'s the first I call. He loved strange thought And knew that sweet extremity of pride That's called platonic love, And that to such a pitch of passion wrought Nothing could bring him, when his lady died, Anodyne for his love. Words were but wasted breath; One dear hope had he: The inclemency Of that or the next winter would be death.
Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell Whether of her or God he thought the most, But think that his mind's eye, When upward turned, on one sole image fell, And that a slight companionable ghost, Wild with divinity, Had so lit up the whole Immense miraculous house, The Bible promised us, It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.
On Florence Emery I call the next, Who finding the first wrinkles on a face Admired and beautiful, And knowing that the future would be vexed With 'minished beauty, multiplied commonplace, Preferred to teach a school, Away from neighbour or friend Among dark skins, and there Permit foul years to wear Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.
Before that end much had she ravelled out From a discourse in figurative speech By some learned Indian On the soul's journey. How it is whirled about, Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach, Until it plunged into the sun; And there free and yet fast, Being both Chance and Choice, Forget its broken toys And sink into its own delight at last.
And I call up MacGregor from the grave, For in my first hard springtime we were friends, Although of late estranged. I thought him half a lunatic, half knave, And told him so, but friendship never ends; And what if mind seem changed, And it seem changed with the mind, When thoughts rise up unbid On generous things that he did And I grow half contented to be blind.
He had much industry at setting out, Much boisterous courage, before loneliness Had driven him crazed; For meditations upon unknown thought Make human intercourse grow less and less; They are neither paid nor praised. But he'd object to the host, The glass because my glass; A ghost-lover he was And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.
But names are nothing. What matter who it be, So that his elements have grown so fine The fume of muscatel Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy No living man can drink from the whole wine. I have mummy truths to tell Whereat the living mock, Though not for sober ear, For maybe all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
Such thought--such thought have I that hold it tight Till meditation master all its parts, Nothing can stay my glance Until that glance run in the world's despite To where the damned have howled away their hearts, And where the blessed dance; Such thought, that in it bound I need no other thing Wound in mind's wandering, As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.
SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF A BLACK CENTAUR
Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood, Even where the horrible green parrots call and swing. My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud. I knew that horse play, knew it for a murderous thing. What wholesome sun has ripened is wholesome food to eat And that alone, yet I being driven half insane Because of some green wing, gathered old mummy wheat In the mad abstract dark and ground it grain by grain And after baked it slowly in an oven; but now I bring full flavoured wine out of a barrel found Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew When Alexander's empire past, they slept so sound. Stretch out your limbs and sleep a long Saturnian sleep; I have loved you better than my soul for all my words, And there is none so fit to keep a watch and keep Unwearied eyes upon those horrible green birds.
THOUGHTS UPON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE WORLD.
Many ingenious lovely things are gone That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude; Above the murderous treachery of the moon Or all that wayward ebb and flow. There stood Amid the ornamental bronze and stone An ancient image made of olive wood; And gone are Phidias' carven ivories And all his golden grasshoppers and bees.
We too had many pretty toys when young; A law indifferent to blame or praise To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays; Public opinion ripening for so long We thought it would outlive all future days. O what fine thought we had because we thought That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned, And a great army but a showy thing; What matter that no cannon had been turned Into a ploughshare; parliament and king Thought that unless a little powder burned The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting And yet it lack all glory; and perchance The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.
Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery Can leave the mother, murdered at her door, To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free; The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant From shallow wits, who knows no work can stand, Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent On master work of intellect or hand, No honour leave its mighty monument, Has but one comfort left: all triumph would But break upon his ghostly solitude.
And other comfort were a bitter wound: To be in love and love what vanishes. Greeks were but lovers; all that country round None dared admit, if such a thought were his, Incendiary or bigot could be found To burn that stump on the Acropolis, Or break in bits the famous ivories Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees?
When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth, It seemed that a dragon of air Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round Or hurried them off on its own furious path; So the platonic year Whirls out new right and wrong Whirls in the old instead; All men are dancers and their tread Goes to the barbarous clangour of gong.
Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am content with that, Contented that a troubled mirror show it Before that brief gleam of its life be gone, An image of its state; The wings half spread for flight, The breast thrust out in pride Whether to play or to ride Those winds that clamour of approaching night.
A man in his own secret meditation Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made In art or politics; Some platonist affirms that in the station Where we should cast off body and trade The ancient habit sticks, And that if our works could But vanish with our breath That were a lucky death, For triumph can but mar our solitude.
The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven: That image can bring wildness, bring a rage To end all things, to end What my laborious life imagined, even The half imagined, the half written page; O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
We, who seven years ago Talked of honour and of truth, Shriek with pleasure if we show The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth.
Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the levelling wind.
Come let us mock at the wise; With all those calendars whereon They fixed old aching eyes, They never saw how seasons run, And now but gape at the sun.
Come let us mock at the good That fancied goodness might be gay, Grown tired of their solitude, Upon some brand-new happy day: Wind shrieked--and where are they?
Mock mockers after that That would not lift a hand maybe To help good, wise or great To bar that foul storm out, for we Traffic in mockery.
And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries, According to the wind, for all are blind. But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon There lurches past, his great eyes without thought Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks, That insolent fiend Robert Artisson To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.
If you, that have grown old were the first dead Neither Caltapa tree nor scented lime Should hear my living feet, nor would I tread Where we wrought that shall break the teeth of time. Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms; night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they.
Bid a strong ghost stand at the head That my Michael may sleep sound, Nor cry, nor turn in the bed Till his morning meal come round; And may departing twilight keep All dread afar till morning's back That his mother may not lack Her fill of sleep.
Bid the ghost have sword in hand: There are malicious things, although Few dream that they exist, Who have planned his murder, for they know Of some most haughty deed or thought That waits upon his future days, And would through hatred of the bays Bring that to nought.
Though You can fashion everything From nothing every day, and teach The morning stars to sing, You have lacked articulate speech To tell Your simplest want, and known, Wailing upon a woman's knee, All of that worst ignominy Of flesh and bone;
And when through all the town there ran The servants of Your enemy A woman and a man, Unless the Holy Writings lie, Have borne You through the smooth and rough And through the fertile and waste, Protecting till the danger past With human love.
I am jealous of the looks men turn on you For all men love your worth; and I must rage At my own image in the looking-glass That's so unlike myself that when you praise it It is as though you praise another, or even Mock me with praise of my mere opposite; And when I wake towards morn I dread myself For the heart cries that what deception wins My cruelty must keep; and so begone If you have seen that image and not my worth.
CUCHULAIN.
All men have praised my strength but not my worth.
THE GIRL.
If you are no more strength than I am beauty I will find out some cavern in the hills And live among the ancient holy men, For they at least have all men's reverence And have no need of cruelty to keep What no deception won.
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