Parnells Funeral and Other Poems

William Butler Yeats

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  • Parnell's Funeral
  • Alternative Song For The Severed Head in `The King of the Great Clock Tower'
  • Two Songs Rewritten For The Tune's Sake
  • A Prayer For Old Age
  • Church And State
  • Supernatural Songs

  • Parnell's Funeral



    I

    UNDER the Great Comedian's tomb the crowd.
    A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown
    About the sky; where that is clear of cloud
    Brightness remains; a brighter star shoots down;
    What shudders run through all that animal blood?
    What is this sacrifice? Can someone there
    Recall the Cretan barb that pierced a star?

    Rich foliage that the starlight glittered through,
    A frenzied crowd, and where the branches sprang
    A beautiful seated boy; a sacred bow;
    A woman, and an arrow on a string;
    A pierced boy, image of a star laid low.
    That woman, the Great Mother imaging,
    Cut out his heart. Some master of design
    Stamped boy and tree upon Sicilian coin.

    An age is the reversal of an age:
    When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone,
    We lived like men that watch a painted stage.
    What matter for the scene, the scene once gone:
    It had not touched our lives. But popular rage,
    Hysterica passio dragged this quarry down.
    None shared our guilt; nor did we play a part
    Upon a painted stage when we devoured his heart.

    Come, fix upon me that accusing eye.
    I thirst for accusation. All that was sung.
    All that was said in Ireland is a lie
    Bred out of the c-ontagion of the throng,
    Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.
    Leave nothing but the nothingS that belong
    To this bare soul, let all men judge that can
    Whether it be an animal or a man.

    II

    The rest I pass, one sentence I unsay.
    Had de Valera eaten parnell's heart
    No loose-lipped demagogue had won the day.
    No civil rancour torn the land apart.

    Had Cosgrave eaten parnell's heart, the land's
    Imagination had been satisfied,
    Or lacking that, government in such hands.
    O'Higgins its sole statesman had not died.

    Had even O'Duffy - but I name no more -
    Their school a crowd, his master solitude;
    Through Jonathan Swift's clark grove he passed, and there
    plucked bitter wisdom that enriched his blood.






    Alternative Song For The Severed Head in `The King of the Great Clock Tower'



    SADDLE and ride, I heard a man say,
    Out of Ben Bulben and Knocknarea,
    What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?
    All those tragic characters ride
    But turn from Rosses' crawling tide,
    The meet's upon the mountain-side.
    A slow low note and an iron bell.

    What brought them there so far from their home.
    Cuchulain that fought night long with the foam,
    What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?
    Niamh that rode on it; lad and lass
    That sat so still and played at the chess?
    What but heroic wantonness?
    A slow low note and an iron bell.

    Aleel, his Countess; Hanrahan
    That seemed but a wild wenching man;
    What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?
    And all alone comes riding there
    The King that could make his people stare,
    Because he had feathers instead of hair.
    A slow low note and an iron bell.
                   
    
    Tune by Arthur Duff





    Two Songs Rewritten For The Tune's Sake



    I
    My Paistin Finn is my sole desire,
    And I am shrunken to skin and bone,
    For all my heart has had for its hire
    Is what I can whistle alone and alone.
            Oro, oro!
    Tomorrow night I will break down the door.

    What is the good of a man and he
    Alone and alone, with a speckled shin?
    I would that I drank with my love on my knee
    Between two barrels at the inn.
            Oro, oro!
    To-morrow night I will break down the door.

    Alone and alone nine nights I lay
    Between two bushes under the rain;
    I thought to have whistled her down that
    I whistled and whistled and whistled in vain.
            Oro, oro!
    To-morrow night I will break down the door.

    II
    I would that I were an old beggar
    Rolling a blind pearl eye,
    For he cannot see my lady
    Go gallivanting by;
    A dreary, dreepy beggar
    Without a friend on the earth
    But a thieving rascally cur -
    O a beggar blind from his birth;
    Or anything else but a rhymer
    Without a thing in his head
    But rhymes for a beautiful lady,
    He rhyming alone in his bed.
            





    A Prayer For Old Age



    GOD guard me from those thoughts men think
    In the mind alone;
    He that sings a lasting song
    Thinks in a marrow-bone;

    From all that makes a wise old man
    That can be praised of all;
    O what am I that I should not seem
    For the song's sake a fool?

    I pray - for word is out
    And prayer comes round again -
    That I may seem, though I die old,
    A foolish, passionate man.
            





    Church And State



    HERE is fresh matter, poet,
    Matter for old age meet;
    Might of the Church and the State,
    Their mobs put under their feet.
    O but heart's wine shall run pure,
    Mind's bread grow sweet.

    That were a cowardly song,
    Wander in dreams no more;
    What if the Church and the State
    Are the mob that howls at the door!
    Wine shall run thick to the end,
    Bread taste sour.
            





    Supernatural Songs



    I

    Ribb at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn

    BECAUSE you have found me in the pitch-dark night
    With open book you ask me what I do.
    Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar
    To those that never saw this tonsured head
    Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked.
    Of Baile and Aillinn you need not speak,
    All know their tale, all know what leaf and twig,
    What juncture of the apple and the yew,
    Surmount their bones; but speak what none have heard.

    The miracle that gave them such a death
    Transfigured to pure substance what had once
    Been bone and sinew; when such bodies join
    There is no touching here, nor touching there,
    Nor straining joy, but whole is joined to whole;
    For the intercourse of angels is a light
    Where for its moment both seem lost, consumed.

    Here in the pitch-dark atmosphere above
    The trembling of the apple and the yew,
    Here on the anniversary of their death,
    The anniversary of their first embrace,
    Those lovers, purified by tragedy,
    Hurry into each other's arms; these eyes,
    By water, herb and solitary prayer
    Made aquiline, are open to that light.
    Though somewhat broken by the leaves, that light
    Lies in a circle on the grass; therein
    I turn the pages of my holy book.

    II
    Ribb denounces Patrick

    An abstract Greek absurdity has crazed the man -
    Recall that masculine Trinity. Man, woman, child (a daughter or a son),
    That's how all natural or supernatural stories run.

    Natural and supernatural with the self-same ring are wed.
    As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead,
    For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said.

    Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind;
    When the conflagration of their passion sinks, damped by the body or the mind,
    That juggling nature mounts, her coil in their embraces twined.

    The mirror-scaled serpent is multiplicity,
    But all that run in couples, on earth, in flood or air, share God that is but three,
    And could beget or bear themselves could they but love as He.

    III
    Ribb in Ecstasy

    What matter that you understood no word!
    Doubtless I spoke or sang what I had heard
    In broken sentences. My soul had found
    All happiness in its own cause or ground.
    Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot
    Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot
    Those amorous cries that out of quiet come
    And must the common round of day resume.

    IV
    There

    There all the barrel-hoops are knit,
    There all the serpent-tails are bit,
    There all the gyres converge in one,
    There all the planets drop in the Sun.

    V
    Ribb considers Christian Love insufficient

    Why should I seek for love or study it?
    It is of God and passes human wit.
    I study hatred with great diligence,
    For that's a passion in my own control,
    A sort of besom that can clear the soul
    Of everything that is not mind or sense.

    Why do I hate man, woman Or event?
    That is a light my jealous soul has sent.
    From terror and deception freed it can
    Discover impurities, can show at last
    How soul may walk when all such things are past,
    How soul could walk before such things began.

    Then my delivered soul herself shall learn
    A darker knowledge and in hatred turn
    From every thought of God mankind has had.
    Thought is a garment and the soul's a bride
    That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide:
    Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.

    At stroke of midnight soul cannot endure
    A bodily or mental furniture.
    What can she take until her Master give!
    Where can she look until He make the show!
    What can she know until He bid her know!
    How can she live till in her blood He live!

    VI
    He and She

    As the moon sidles up
    Must she sidle up,
    As trips the scared moon
    Away must she trip:
    "His light had struck me blind
    Dared I stop".

    She sings as the moon sings:
    "I am I, am I;
    The greater grows my light
    The further that I fly."
    All creation shivers
    With that sweet cry.

    VII
    What Magic Drum?

    He holds him from desire, all but stops his breathing lest
    primordial Motherhood forsake his limbs, the child no longer rest,
    Drinking joy as it were milk upon his breast.

    Through light-obliterating garden foliage what magic drum?
    Down limb and breast or down that glimmering belly move his mouth and sinewy tongue.
    What from the forest came? What beast has licked its young?

    VIII
    Whence had they come?

    Eternity is passion, girl or boy
    Cry at the onset of their sexual joy
    "For ever and for ever'; then awake
    Ignorant what Dramatis personae spake;
    A passion-driven exultant man sings out
    Sentences that he has never thought;
    The Flagellant lashes those submissive loins
    Ignorant what that dramatist enjoins,
    What master made the lash. Whence had they come,
    The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome?
    What sacred drama through her body heaved
    When world-transforming Charlemagne was con-
    ceived?

    IX
    The Four Ages of Man

    He with body waged a fight,
    But body won; it walks upright.

    Then he struggled with the heart;
    Innocence and peace depart.

    Then he struggled with the mind;
    His proud heart he left behind.

    Now his wars on God begin;
    At stroke of midnight God shall win.

    X
    Conjunctions

    If Jupiter and Saturn meet,
    What a cop of mummy wheat!

    The sword's a cross; thereon He died:
    On breast of Mars the goddess sighed.

    XI
    A Needle's Eye

    All the stream that's roaring by
    Came out of a needle's eye;
    Things unborn, things that are gone,
    From needle's eye still goad it on.

    XII
    Meru

    Civilisation is hooped together, brought
    Under a mle, under the semblance of peace
    By manifold illusion; but man's life is thought,
    And he, despite his terror, cannot cease
    Ravening through century after century,
    Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come
    Into the desolation of reality:
    Egypt and Greece, good-bye, and good-bye, Rome!
    Hermits upon Mount Meru or Everest,
    Caverned in night under the drifted snow,
    Or where that snow and winter's dreadful blast
    Beat down upon their naked bodies, know
    That day brings round the night, that before dawn
    His glory and his monuments are gone.