YEATS, William Butler


The Withering of the Boughs

I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds:

„Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,

I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words,

For the roads are unending, and there is no place to my mind.”

The honey-pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill,

And I fell asleep upon lonely Echtge of streams.

No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;

The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

I know of the leafy paths that the witches take

Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool,

And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake;

I know where a dim moon drifts, where the Danaan kind

Wind and unwind dancing when the light grows cool

On the island lawns, their feet where the pale foam gleams.

No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;

The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

I know of the sleepy country, where swans fly round

Coupled with golden chains, and sing as they fly.

A king and a queen are wandering there, and the sound

Has made them so happy and hopeless, so deaf and so blind

With wisdom, they wander till all the years have gone by;

I know, and the curlew and peewit on Echtge of streams.

No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;

The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.


The Mother of God

The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare

Through the hollow of an ear;

Wings beating about the room;

The terror of all terrors that I bore

The Heavens in my womb.

Had I not found content among the shows

Every common woman knows,

Chimney corner, garden walk,

Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes

And gather all the talk?

What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,

This fallen star my milk sustains,

This love that makes my heart’s blood stop

Or strikes a sudden chill into my bones

And bids my hair stand up?


Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


The Mask

Put off that mask of burning gold

With emerald eyes."

"O no, my dear, you make so bold

To find if hearts be wild and wise,

And yet not cold."

"I would but find what's there to find,

Love or deceit."

"It was the mask engaged your mind,

And after set your heart to beat,

Not what's behind."

"But lest you are my enemy,

I must enquire."

"O no, my dear, let all that be;

What matter, so there is but fire

In you, in me?"


Epitaph

Cast a cold eye

On life, on death.

Horseman, pass by!


The Sorrow of Love

The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,

The full round moon and the star-laden sky,

And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,

Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.

And then you came with those red mournful lips,

And with you came the whole of the world's tears,

And all the sorrows of her labouring ships,

And all the burden of her myriad years.

And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,

The curd-pale moon, the white stars in the sky,

And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves

Are shaken with earth's old and weary cry.


Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

No Second Troy

Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great.

Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?

When you are old and grey

WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


The wild swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a still sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me

Since I first made my count;

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings

Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

And now my heart is sore.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?


The song of wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.



The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes droppingslow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.


Sailing to Byzantium
…..
That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

- Those dying generations - at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come
…..


The Stolen Child

WHERE dips the rocky highland

Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

There lies a leafy island

Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water-rats;

There we've hid our faery vats,

Full of berries

And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you

can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim grey sands with light,

Far off by furthest Rosses

We foot it all the night,

Weaving olden dances,

Mingling hands and mingling glances

Till the moon has taken flight;

To and fro we leap

And chase the frothy bubbles,

While the world is full of troubles

And is anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you

can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes

From the hills above Glen-Car,.

In pools among the rushes

That scarce could bathe a star,

We seek for slumbering trout

And whispering in their ears

Give them unquiet dreams;

Leaning softly out

From ferns that drop their tears

Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you

can understand.

Away with us he's going,

The solemn-eyed:

He'll hear no more the lowing

Of the calves on the warm hillside

Or the kettle on the hob

Sing peace into his breast,

Or see the brown mice bob

Round and round the oatmeal-chest.

For becomes, the human child,

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

from a world more full of weeping than you

can understand.


The Curse Of Cromwell

YOU ask what -- I have found, and far and wide I go:

Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew,

The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay,

And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen, where are they?

And there is an old beggar wandering in his pride -- -

His fathers served their fathers before Christ was crucified.

O what of that, O what of that,

'What is there left to say?

All neighbourly content and easy talk are gone,

But there's no good complaining, for money's rant is on.

He that's mounting up must on his neighbour mount,

And we and all the Muses are things of no account.

They have schooling of their own, but I pass their schooling by,

What can they know that we know that know the time to die?

O what of that, O what of that,

What is there left to say?

But there's another knowledge that my heart destroys,

As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy's

Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;

That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company,

Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,

That I am still their setvant though all are underground.

O what of that, O what of that,

What is there left to say?

I came on a great house in the middle of the night,

Its open lighted doorway and its windows all alight,

And all my friends were there and made me welcome too;

But I woke in an old ruin that the winds. howled through;

And when I pay attention I must out and walk

Among the dogs and horses that understand my talk.

O what of that, O what of that,

What is there left to say?