Responsibilities

William Butler Yeats

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  • Introductory Rhymes
  • The Grey Rock
  • The Two Kings
  • To A Wealthy Man Who Promised A Second Subscription To The Dublin Municipal Gallery If It Were Proved The People Wanted Pictures
  • September 1913
  • To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing
  • Paudeen
  • To A Shade
  • When Helen Lived
  • On Those That Hated The Playboy Of The Western World
  • The Three Beggars
  • The Three Hermits
  • Beggar To Beggar Cried
  • Running To Paradise
  • The Hour Before Dawn
  • A Song From The Player Queen
  • The Realists
  • I. The Witch
  • II. The Peacock
  • The Mountain Tomb
  • I. To A Child Dancing In The Wind
  • II. Two Years Later
  • A Memory Of Youth
  • Fallen Majesty
  • Friends
  • The Cold Heaven
  • That The Night Come
  • An Appointment
  • The Magi
  • THE DOLLS
  • A Coat
  • Closing Rhymes



  • Introductory Rhymes



    Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain
    Somewhere in ear-shot for the story's end,
    Old Dublin merchant "free of the ten and four"
    Or trading out of Galway into Spain;
    Old country scholar, Robert Emmet's friend,
    A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;
    Merchant and scholar who have left me blood
    That has not passed through any huckster's loin,
    Soldiers that gave, whatever die was cast:
    A Butler or an Armstrong that withstood
    Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne
    James and his Irish when the Dutchman crossed;
    Old merchant skipper that leaped overboard
    After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay;
    You most of all, silent and fierce old man,
    Because the daily spectacle that stirred
    My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say,
    "Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun";
    Pardon that for a barren passion's sake,
    Although I have come close on forty-nine,
    I have no child, I have nothing but a book,
    Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine.






    The Grey Rock



    Poets with whom I learned my trade.
    Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,
    Here's an old story I've remade,
    Imagining 'twould better please
    Your cars than stories now in fashion,
    Though you may think I waste my breath
    Pretending that there can be passion
    That has more life in it than death,
    And though at bottling of your wine
    Old wholesome Goban had no say;
    The moral's yours because it's mine.

    When cups went round at close of day -
    Is not that how good stories run? -
    The gods were sitting at the board
    In their great house at Slievenamon.
    They sang a drowsy song, Or snored,
    For all were full of wine and meat.
    The smoky torches made a glare
    On metal Goban 'd hammered at,
    On old deep silver rolling there
    Or on somc still unemptied cup
    That he, when frenzy stirred his thews,
    Had hammered out on mountain top
    To hold the sacred stuff he brews
    That only gods may buy of him.

    Now from that juice that made them wise
    All those had lifted up the dim
    Imaginations of their eyes,
    For one that was like woman made
    Before their sleepy eyelids ran
    And trembling with her passion said,
    "Come out and dig for a dead man,
    Who's burrowing Somewhere in the ground
    And mock him to his face and then
    Hollo him on with horse and hound,
    For he is the worst of all dead men.'

    We should be dazed and terror-struck,
    If we but saw in dreams that room,
    Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck
    That empticd all our days to come.
    I knew a woman none could please,
    Because she dreamed when but a child
    Of men and women made like these;
    And after, when her blood ran wild,
    Had ravelled her own story out,
    And said, "In two or in three years
    I needs must marry some poor lout,'
    And having said it, burst in tears.

    Since, tavern comrades, you have died,
    Maybe your images have stood,
    Mere bone and muscle thrown aside,
    Before that roomful or as good.
    You had to face your ends when young -
    'Twas wine or women, or some curse -
    But never made a poorer song
    That you might have a heavier purse,
    Nor gave loud service to a cause
    That you might have a troop of friends,
    You kept the Muses' sterner laws,
    And unrepenting faced your ends,
    And therefore earned the right - and yet
    Dowson and Johnson most I praise -
    To troop with those the world's forgot,
    And copy their proud steady gaze.

    "The Danish troop was driven out
    Between the dawn and dusk,' she said;
    "Although the event was long in doubt.
    Although the King of Ireland's dead
    And half the kings, before sundown
    All was accomplished.
                                          "When this day
    Murrough, the King of Ireland's son,
    Foot after foot was giving way,
    He and his best troops back to back
    Had perished there, but the Danes ran,
    Stricken with panic from the attack,
    The shouting of an unseen man;
    And being thankful Murrough found,
    Led by a footsole dipped in blood
    That had made prints upon the ground,
    Where by old thorn-trees that man stood;
    And though when he gazed here and there,
    He had but gazed on thorn-trees, spoke,
    ""Who is the friend that seems but air
    And yet could give so fine a stroke?''
    Thereon a young man met his eye,
    Who said, ""Because she held me in
    Her love, and would not have me die,
    Rock-nurtured Aoife took a pin,
    And pushing it into my shirt,
    Promised that for a pin's sake
    No man should see to do me hurt;
    But there it's gone; I will not take
    The fortune that had been my shame
    Seeing, King's son, what wounds you have. -
    'Twas roundly spoke, but when night came
    He had betrayed me to his grave,
    For he and the King's son were dead.
    I'd promised him two hundred years,
    And when for all I'd done or said -
    And these immortal eyes shed tears -
    He claimed his country's need was most,
    I'd saved his life, yet for the sake
    Of a new friend he has turned a ghost.
    What does he cate if my heart break?
    I call for spade and horse and hound
    That we may harry him.' Thereon
    She cast herself upon the ground
    And rent her clothes and made her moan:
    "Why are they faithless when their might
    Is from the holy shades that rove
    The grey rock and the windy light?
    Why should the faithfullest heart most love
    The bitter sweetness of false faces?
    Why must the lasting love what passes,
    Why are the gods by men betrayed?'

    But thereon every god stood up
    With a slow smile and without sound,
    And Stretching forth his arm and cup
    To where she moaned upon the ground,
    Suddenly drenched her to the skin;
    And she with Goban's wine adrip,
    No more remembering what had been.
    Stared at the gods with laughing lip.

    I have kept my faith, though faith was tried,
    To that rock-born, rock-wandering foot,
    And thc world's altered since you died,
    And I am in no good repute
    With the loud host before the sea,
    That think sword-strokes were better meant
    Than lover's music - let that be,
    So that the wandering foot's content.
                                         





    The Two Kings



    KING EOCHAID came at sundown to a wood
    Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen
    He had outridden his war-wasted men
    That with empounded cattle trod the mire,
    And where beech-trees had mixed a pale green light
    With the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a stag
    Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.
    Because it stood upon his path and seemed
    More hands in height than any stag in the world
    He sat with tightened rein and loosened mouth
    Upon his trembling horse, then drove the spur;
    But the stag stooped and ran at him, and passed,
    Rending the horse's flank. King Eochaid reeled,
    Then drew his sword to hold its levelled point
    Against the stag. When horn and steel were met
    The horn resounded as though it had been silver,
    A sweet, miraculous, terrifying sound.
    Horn locked in sword, they tugged and struggled there
    As though a stag and unicorn were met
    Among the African Mountains of the Moon,
    Until at last the double horns, drawn backward,
    Butted below the single and so pierced
    The entrails of the horse. Dropping his sword
    King Eochaid seized the horns in his strong hands
    And stared into the sea-green eye, and so
    Hither and thither to and fro they trod
    Till all the place was beaten into mire.
    The strong thigh and the agile thigh were met,
    The hands that gathered up the might of the world,
    And hoof and horn that had sucked in their speed
    Amid the elaborate wilderness of the air.
    Through bush they plunged and over ivied root,
    And where the stone struck fire, while in the leaves
    A squirrel whinnied and a bird screamed out;
    But when at last he forced those sinewy flanks
    Against a beech-bole, he threw down the beast
    And knelt above it with drawn knife. On the instant
    It vanished like a shadow, and a cry
    So mournful that it seemed the cry of one
    Who had lost some unimaginable treasure
    Wandered between the blue and the green leaf
    And climbed into the air, crumbling away,
    Till all had seemed a shadow or a vision
    But for the trodden mire, the pool of blood,
    The disembowelled horse.
                                          King Eochaid ran
    Toward peopled Tara, nor stood to draw his breath
    Until he came before the painted wall,
    The posts of polished yew, circled with bronze,
    Of the great door; but though the hanging lamps
    Showed their faint light through the unshuttered windows,
    Nor door, nor mouth, nor slipper made a noise,
    Nor on the ancient beaten paths, that wound
    From well-side or from plough-land, was there noisc;
    Nor had there been the noise of living thing
    Before him or behind, but that far off
    On the horizon edge bellowed the herds.
    Knowing that silence brings no good to kings,
    And mocks returning victory, he passed
    Between the pillars with a beating heart
    And saw where in the midst of the great hall
    pale-faced, alone upon a bench, Edain
    Sat upright with a sword before her feet.
    Her hands on either side had gripped the bench.
    Her eyes were cold and steady, her lips tight.
    Some passion had made her stone. Hearing a foot
    She started and then knew whose foot it was;
    But when he thought to take her in his arms
    She motioned him afar, and rose and spoke:
    "I have sent among the fields or to the woods
    The fighting-men and servants of this house,
    For I would have your judgment upon one
    Who is self-accused. If she be innocent
    She would not look in any known man's face
    Till judgment has been given, and if guilty,
    Would never look again on known man's face.'
    And at these words hc paled, as she had paled,
    Knowing that he should find upon her lips
    The meaning of that monstrous day.
                                          Then she:
    "You brought me where your brother Ardan sat
    Always in his one seat, and bid me care him
    Through that strange illness that had fixed him there.
    And should he die to heap his burial-mound
    And catve his name in Ogham.' Eochaid said,
    "He lives?' "He lives and is a healthy man.'
    "While I have him and you it matters little
    What man you have lost, what evil you have found.'
    "I bid them make his bed under this roof
    And carried him his food with my own hands,
    And so the weeks passed by. But when I said,
    ""What is this trouble?'' he would answer nothing,
    Though always at my words his trouble grew;
    And I but asked the more, till he cried out,
    Weary of many questions: ""There are things
    That make the heart akin to the dumb stone.''
    Then I replied, ""Although you hide a secret,
    Hopeless and dear, or terrible to think on,
    Speak it, that I may send through the wide world
    Day after day you question me, and I,
    Because there is such a storm amid my thoughts
    I shall be carried in the gust, command,
    Forbid, beseech and waste my breath.'' Then I:
    Although the thing that you have hid were evil,
    The speaking of it could be no great wrong,
    And evil must it be, if done 'twere worse
    Than mound and stone that keep all virtue in,
    And loosen on us dreams that waste our life,
    Shadows and shows that can but turn the brain.''
    but finding him still silent I stooped down
    And whispering that none but he should hear,
    Said, ""If a woman has put this on you,
    My men, whether it please her or displease,
    And though they have to cross the Loughlan waters
    And take her in the middle of armed men,
    Shall make her look upon her handiwork,
    That she may quench the rick she has fired; and though
    She may have worn silk clothes, or worn a crown,
    She'II not be proud, knowing within her heart
    That our sufficient portion of the world
    Is that we give, although it be brief giving,
    Happiness to children and to men.''
    Then he, driven by his thought beyond his thought,
    And speaking what he would not though he would,
    Sighed, ""You, even you yourself, could work the cure!''
    And at those words I rose and I went out
    And for nine days he had food from other hands,
    And for nine days my mind went whirling round
    The one disastrous zodiac, muttering
    That the immedicable mound's beyond
    Our questioning, beyond our pity even.
    But when nine days had gone I stood again
    Before his chair and bending down my head
    I bade him go when all his household slept
    To an old empty woodman's house that's hidden
    Westward of Tara, among the hazel-trees -
    For hope would give his limbs the power - and await
    A friend that could, he had told her, work his cure
    And would be no harsh friend.
                                          When night had deepened,
    I groped my way from beech to hazel wood,
    Found that old house, a sputtering torch within,
    And stretched out sleeping on a pile of skins
    Ardan, and though I called to him and tried
    To Shake him out of sleep, I could not rouse him.
    I waited till the night was on the turn,
    Then fearing that some labourer, on his way
    To plough or pasture-land, might see me there,
    Went out.
                           Among the ivy-covered rocks,
    As on the blue light of a sword, a man
    Who had unnatural majesty, and eyes
    Like the eyes of some great kite scouring the woods,
    Stood on my path. Trembling from head to foot
    I gazed at him like grouse upon a kite;
    But with a voice that had unnatural music,
    ""A weary wooing and a long,'' he said,
    ""Speaking of love through other lips and looking
    Under the eyelids of another, for it was my craft
    That put a passion in the sleeper there,
    And when I had got my will and drawn you here,
    Where I may speak to you alone, my craft
    Sucked up the passion out of him again
    And left mere sleep. He'll wake when the sun wakes,
    push out his vigorous limbs and rub his eyes,
    And wonder what has ailed him these twelve months.''
    I cowered back upon the wall in terror,
    But that sweet-sounding voice ran on: ""Woman,
    I was your husband when you rode the air,
    Danced in the whirling foam and in the dust,
    In days you have not kept in memory,
    Being betrayed into a cradle, and I come
    That I may claim you as my wife again.''
    I was no longer terrified - his voice
    Had half awakened some old memory -
    Yet answered him, ""I am King Eochaid's wife
    And with him have found every happiness
    Women can find.'' With a most masterful voice,
    That made the body seem as it were a string
    Under a bow, he cried, ""What happiness
    Can lovers have that know their happiness
    Must end at the dumb stone? But where we build
    Our sudden palaces in the still air
    pleasure itself can bring no weariness.
    Nor can time waste the cheek, nor is there foot
    That has grown weary of the wandering dance,
    Nor an unlaughing mouth, but mine that mourns,
    Among those mouths that sing their sweethearts' praise,
    Your empty bed.'' ""How should I love,'' I answered,
    ""Were it not that when the dawn has lit my bed
    And shown my husband sleeping there, I have sighcd,
    "Your strength and nobleness will pass away'?
    Or how should love be worth its pains were it not
    That when he has fallen asleep within my atms,
    Being wearied out, I love in man the child?
    What can they know of love that do not know
    She builds her nest upon a narrow ledge
    Above a windy precipice?'' Then he:
    ""Seeing that when you come to the deathbed
    You must return, whether you would or no,
    This human life blotted from memory,
    Why must I live some thirty, forty years,
    Alone with all this useless happiness?''
    Thereon he seized me in his arms, but I
    Thrust him away with both my hands and cried,
    ""Never will I believe there is any change
    Can blot out of my memory this life
    Sweetened by death, but if I could believe,
    That were a double hunger in my lips
    For what is doubly brief.''
                                          And now the shape
    My hands were pressed to vanished suddenly.
    I staggered, but a beech-tree stayed my fall,
    And clinging to it I could hear the cocks
    Crow upon Tara."
                            King Eochaid bowed his head
    And thanked her for her kindness to his brother,
    For that she promised, and for that refused.
    Thereon the bellowing of the empounded herds
    Rose round the walls, and through the bronze-ringed door
    Jostled and shouted those war-wasted men,
    And in the midst King Eochaid's brother stood,
    And bade all welcome, being ignorant.
                                         





    To A Wealthy Man Who Promised A Second Subscription To The Dublin Municipal Gallery If It Were Proved The People Wanted Pictures



    YOU gave, but will not give again
    Until enough of paudeen's pence
    By Biddy's halfpennies have lain
    To be "some sort of evidence',
    Before you'll put your guineas down,
    That things it were a pride to give
    Are what the blind and ignorant town
    Imagines best to make it thrive.
    What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
    His mummers to the market-place,
    What th' onion-sellers thought or did
    So that his plautus set the pace
    For the Italian comedies?
    And Guidobaldo, when he made
    That grammar school of courtesies
    Where wit and beauty learned their trade
    Upon Urbino's windy hill,
    Had sent no runners to and fro
    That he might learn the shepherds' will
    And when they drove out Cosimo,
    Indifferent how the rancour ran,
    He gave the hours they had set free
    To Michelozzo's latest plan
    For the San Marco Library,
    Whence turbulent Italy should draw
    Delight in Art whose end is peace,
    In logic and in natural law
    By sucking at the dugs of Greece.
    Your open hand but shows our loss,
    For he knew better how to live.
    Let paudeens play at pitch and toss,
    Look up in the sun's eye and give
    What the exultant heart calls good
    That some new day may breed the best
    Because you gave, not what they would,
    But the right twigs for an eagle's nest!
    December
                                         


    September 1913



    WHAT need you, being come to sense,
    But fumble in a greasy till
    And add the halfpence to the pence
    And prayer to shivering prayer, until
    You have dried the marrow from the bone?
    For men were born to pray and save:
    Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
    It's with O'Leary in the grave.

    Yet they were of a different kind,
    The names that stilled your childish play,
    They have gone about the world like wind,
    But little time had they to pray
    For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
    And what, God help us, could they save?
    Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
    It's with O'Leary in the grave.

    Was it for this the wild geese spread
    The grey wing upon every tide;
    For this that all that blood was shed,
    For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
    And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
    All that delirium of the brave?
    Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
    It's with O'Leary in the grave.

    Yet could we turn the years again,
    And call those exiles as they were
    In all their loneliness and pain,
    You'd cry, "Some woman's yellow hair
    Has maddened every mother's son':
    They weighed so lightly what they gave.
    But let them be, they're dead and gone,
    They're with O'Leary in the grave.
                                         





    To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing



    NOW all the truth is out,
    Be secret and take defeat
    From any brazen throat,
    For how can you compete,
    Being honour bred, with one
    Who, were it proved he lies,
    Were neither shamed in his own
    Nor in his neighbours' eyes?
    Bred to a harder thing
    Than Triumph, turn away
    And like a laughing string
    Whereon mad fingers play
    Amid a place of stone,
    Be secret and exult,
    Because of all things known
    That is most difficult.
                                         





    Paudeen



    INDIGNANT at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite
    Of our old paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind
    Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light;
    Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind
    A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought
    That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,
    There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,
    A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry.
                                         





    To A Shade



    IF you have revisited the town, thin Shade,
    Whether to look upon your monument
    (I wonder if the builder has been paid)
    Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent
    To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
    When grey gulls flit about instead of men,
    And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
    Let these content you and be gone again;
    For they are at their old tricks yet.
                                          A man
    Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought
    In his full hands what, had they only known,
    Had given their children's children loftier thought,
    Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
    Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
    And instilt heaped upon him for his pains,
    And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
    Your enemy, an old fotil mouth, had set
    The pack upon him.
                            Go, unquiet wanderer,
    And gather the Glasnevin coverlet
    About your head till the dust stops your ear,
    The time for you to taste of that Salt breath
    And listen at the corners has not come;
    You had enough of sorrow before death -
    Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.
                                         





    When Helen Lived



    WE have cried in our despair
    That men desert,
    For some trivial affair
    Or noisy, insolent sport,
    Beauty that we have won
    From bitterest hours;
    Yet we, had we walked within
    Those topless towers
    Where Helen waked with her boy,
    Had given but as the rest
    Of the men and women of Troy,
    A word and a jest.
                                         





    On Those That Hated The Playboy Of The Western World



    ONCE, when midnight smote the air,
    Eunuchs ran through Hell and met
    On every crowded street to stare
    Upon great Juan riding by:
    Even like these to rail and sweat
    Staring upon his sinewy thigh.
                                         





    The Three Beggars



    "Though to my feathers in the wet,
    I have stood here from break of day.
    I have not found a thing to eat,
    For only rubbish comes my way.
    Am I to live on lebeen-lone?'
    Muttered the old crane of Gort.
    "For all my pains on lebeen-lone?'

    King Guaire walked amid his court
    The palace-yard and river-side
    And there to three old beggars said,
    "You that have wandered far and wide
    Can ravel out what's in my head.
    Do men who least desire get most,
    Or get the most who most desire?'
    A beggar said, "They get the most
    Whom man or devil cannot tire,
    And what could make their muscles taut
    Unless desire had made them so?'
    But Guaire laughed with secret thought,
    "If that be true as it seems true,
    One of you three is a rich man,
    For he shall have a thousand pounds
    Who is first asleep, if but he can
    Sleep before the third noon sounds."
    And thereon, merry as a bird
    With his old thoughts, King Guaire went
    From river-side and palace-yard
    And left them to their argument.
    "And if I win,' one beggar said,
    'Though I am old I shall persuade
    A pretty girl to share my bed';
    The second: "I shall learn a trade';
    The third: "I'll hurry' to the course
    Among the other gentlemen,
    And lay it all upon a horse';
    The second: "I have thought again:
    A farmer has more dignity.'
    One to another sighed and cried:
    The exorbitant dreams of beggary.
    That idleness had borne to pride,
    Sang through their teeth from noon to noon;
    And when the sccond twilight brought
    The frenzy of the beggars' moon
    None closed his blood-shot eyes but sought
    To keep his fellows from their sleep;
    All shouted till their anger grew
    And they were whirling in a heap.

    They mauled and bit the whole night through;
    They mauled and bit till the day shone;
    They mauled and bit through all that day
    And till another night had gone,
    Or if they made a moment's stay
    They sat upon their heels to rail,,
    And when old Guaire came and stood
    Before the three to end this tale,
    They were commingling lice and blood
    "Time's up,' he cried, and all the three
    With blood-shot eyes upon him stared.
    "Time's up,' he eried, and all the three
    Fell down upon the dust and snored.

    `Maybe I shall be lucky yet,
    Now they are silent,' said the crane.
    `Though to my feathers in the wet
    I've stood as I were made of stone
    And seen the rubbish run about,
    It's certain there are trout somewhere
    And maybe I shall take a trout
    but I do not seem to care.'
                                         





    The Three Hermits



    THREE old hermits took the air
    By a cold and desolate sea,
    First was muttering a prayer,
    Second rummaged for a flea;
    On a windy stone, the third,
    Giddy with his hundredth year,
    Sang unnoticed like a bird:
    "Though the Door of Death is near
    And what waits behind the door,
    Three times in a single day
    I, though upright on the shore,
    Fall asleep when I should pray.'
    So the first, but now the second:
    "We're but given what we have eamed
    When all thoughts and deeds are reckoned,
    So it's plain to be discerned
    That the shades of holy men
    Who have failed, being weak of will,
    Pass the Door of Birth again,
    And are plagued by crowds, until
    They've the passion to escape."
    Moaned the other, "They are thrown
    Into some most fearful shape.'
    But the second mocked his moan:
    "They are not changed to anything,
    Having loved God once, but maybe
    To a poet or a king
    Or a witty lovely lady."
    While he'd rummaged rags and hair,
    Caught and cracked his flea, the third,
    Giddy with his hundredth year,
    Sang unnoticed like a bird.
                                         





    Beggar To Beggar Cried



    `TIME to put off the world and go somewhere
    And find my health again in the sea air,'
    Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
    `And make my soul before my pate is bare.-

    `And get a comfortable wife and house
    To rid me of the devil in my shoes,'
    Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
    `And the worse devil that is between my thighs.'

    And though I'd marry with a comely lass,
    She need not be too comely - let it pass,'
    Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
    `But there's a devil in a looking-glass.'

    `Nor should she be too rich, because the rich
    Are driven by wealth as beggars by the itch,'
    Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
    `And cannot have a humorous happy speech.'

    `And there I'll grow respected at my ease,
    And hear amid the garden's nightly peace.'
    Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
    `The wind-blown clamour of the barnacle-geese.'
                                         





    Running To Paradise



    As I came over Windy Gap
    They threw a halfpenny into my cap.
    For I am running to paradise;
    And all that I need do is to wish
    And somebody puts his hand in the dish
    To throw me a bit of salted fish:
    And there the king is but as the beggar.

    My brother Mourteen is worn out
    With skelping his big brawling lout,
    And I am running to paradise;
    A poor life, do what he can,
    And though he keep a dog and a gun,
    A serving-maid and a serving-man:
    And there the king is but as the beggar.

    Poor men have grown to be rich men,
    And rich men grown to be poor again,
    And I am running to paradise;
    And many a darling wit's grown dull
    That tossed a bare heel when at school,
    Now it has filled a old sock full:
    And there the king is but as the beggar.

    The wind is old and still at play
    While I must hurry upon my way.
    For I am running to paradise;
    Yet never have I lit on a friend
    To take my fancy like the wind
    That nobody can buy or bind:
    And there the king is but as the beggar.
                                         





    The Hour Before Dawn



    A CURSING rogue with a merry face,
    A bundle of rags upon a crutch,
    Stumbled upon that windy place
    Called Cruachan, and it was as much
    As the one sturdy leg could do
    To keep him upright while he cursed.
    He had counted, where long years ago
    Queen Maeve's nine Maines had been nursed,
    A pair of lapwings, one old sheep,
    And not a house to the plain's edge,
    When close to his right hand a heap
    Of grey stones and a rocky ledge
    Reminded him that he could make.
    If he but shifted a few stones,
    A shelter till the daylight broke.
    But while he fumbled with the stones
    They toppled over; "Were it not
    I have a lucky wooden shin
    I had been hurt'; and toppling brought
    Before his eyes, where stones had been,
    A dark deep hollow in the rock.
    He gave a gasp and thought to have fled,
    Being certain it was no right rock
    Because an ancient history said
    Hell Mouth lay open near that place,
    And yet stood still, because inside
    A great lad with a beery face
    Had tucked himself away beside
    A ladle and a tub of beer,
    And snored, no phantom by his look.
    So with a laugh at his own fear
    He crawled into that pleasant nook.

    "Night grows uneasy near the dawn
    Till even I sleep light; but who
    Has tired of his own company?
    What one of Maeve's nine brawling sons
    Sick of his grave has wakened me?
    But let him keep his grave for once
    That I may find the sleep I have lost."

    What care I if you sleep or wake?
    But I'Il have no man call me ghost."

    Say what you please, but from daybreak
    I'll sleep another century."

    And I will talk before I sleep
    And drink before I talk.'
                                          And he
    Had dipped the wooden ladle deep
    Into the sleeper's tub of beer
    Had not the sleeper started up.

    Before you have dipped it in the beer
    I dragged from Goban's mountain-top
    I'll have assurance that you are able
    To value beer; no half-legged fool
    Shall dip his nose into my ladle
    Merely for stumbling on this hole
    In the bad hour before the dawn."

    `Why beer is only beer.'
                                          `But say
    "I'll sleep until the winter's gone,
    Or maybe to Midsummer Day,"
    And drink and you will sleep that length.'

    "I'd like to sleep till winter's gone
    Or till the sun is in his srrength.
    This blast has chilled me to the bone.'

    "I had no better plan at first.
    I thought to wait for that or this;
    Maybe the weather was accursed
    Or I had no woman there to kiss;
    So slept for half a year or so;
    But year by year I found that less
    Gave me such pleasure I'd forgo
    Even a half-hour's nothingness,
    And when at one year's end I found
    I had not waked a single minute,
    I chosc this burrow under ground.
    I'll sleep away all time within it:
    My sleep were now nine centuries
    But for those mornings when I find
    The lapwing at their foolish dies
    And the sheep bleating at the wind
    As when I also played the fool.'

    The beggar in a rage began
    Upon his hunkers in the hole,
    "It's plain that you are no right man
    To mock at everything I love
    As if it were not worth, the doing.
    I'd have a merry life enough
    If a good Easter wind were blowing,
    And though the winter wind is bad
    I should not be too down in the mouth
    For anything you did or said
    If but this wind were in the south.'

    "You cry aloud, O would 'twere spring
    Or that the wind would shift a point,
    And do not know that you would bring,
    If time were suppler in the joint,
    Neither the spring nor the south wind
    But the hour when you shall pass away
    And leave no smoking wick behind,
    For all life longs for the Last Day
    And there's no man but cocks his ear
    To know when Michael's trumpet cries
    "That flesh and bone may disappear,
    And souls as if they were but sighs,
    And there be nothing but God left;
    But, I aone being blessed keep
    Like some old rabbit to my cleft
    And wait Him in a drunken sleep.'
    He dipped his ladle in the tub
    And drank and yawned and stretched him out,
    The other shouted, "You would rob
    My life of every pleasant thought
    And every comfortable thing,
    And so take that and that." Thereon
    He gave him a great pummelling,
    But might have pummelled at a stone
    For all the sleeper knew or cared;
    And after heaped up stone on stone,
    And then, grown weary, prayed and cursed
    And heaped up stone on stone again,
    And prayed and cursed and cursed and bed
    From Maeve and all that juggling plain,
    Nor gave God thanks till overhead
    The clouds were brightening with the dawn.
                                         





    A Song From The Player Queen



    MY mother dandled me and sang,
    "How young it is, how young!'
    And made a golden cradle
    That on a willow swung.

    "He went away,' my mother sang,
    "When I was brought to bed,'
    And all the while her needle pulled
    The gold and silver thread.

    She pulled the thread and bit the thread
    And made a golden gown,
    And wept because she had dreamt that I
    Was born to wear a crown.

    "When she was got,' my mother sang,
    I heard a sea-mew cry,
    And saw a flake of the yellow foam
    That dropped upon my thigh."

    How therefore could she help but braid
    The gold into my hair,
    And dream that I should carry
    The golden top of care?
                                         





    The Realists



    HOPE that you may understand!
    What can books of men that wive
    In a dragon-guarded land,
    paintings of the dolphin-drawn
    Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons
    Do, but awake a hope to live
    That had gone
    With the dragons?
                                         





    I. The Witch



    TOIL and grow rich,
    What's that but to lie
    With a foul witch
    And after, drained dry,
    To be brought
    To the chamber where
    Lies one long sought
    With despair?
                                         





    II. The Peacock



    WHAT'S riches to him
    That has made a great peacock
    With the pride of his eye?
    The wind-beaten, stone-grey,
    And desolate Three Rock
    Would nourish his whim.
    Live he or die
    Amid wet rocks and heather,
    His ghost will be gay
    Adding feather to feather
    For the pride of his eye.
                                         





    The Mountain Tomb



    POUR wine and dance if manhood still have pride,
    Bring roses if the rose be yet in bloom;
    The cataract smokes upon the mountain side,
    Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.
    Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet
    That there be no foot silent in the room
    Nor mouth from kissing, nor from wine unwet;
    Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.
    In vain, in pain; the cataract still cries;
    The everlasting taper lights the gloom;
    All wisdom shut into his onyx eyes,
    Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb.
                                         





    I. To A Child Dancing In The Wind



    DANCE there upon the shore;
    What need have you to care
    For wind or water's roar?
    And tumble out your hair
    That the salt drops have wet;
    Being young you have not known
    The fool's triumph, nor yet
    Love lost as soon as won,
    Nor the best labourer dead
    And all the sheaves to bind.
    What need have you to dread
    The monstrous crying of wind!
                                         





    II. Two Years Later



    HAS no one said those daring
    Kind eyes should be more learn'd?
    Or warned you how despairing
    The moths are when they are burned?
    I could have warned you; but you are young,
    So we speak a different tongue.
    O you will take whatever's offered
    And dream that all the world's a friend,
    Suffer as your mother suffered,
    Be as broken in the end.
    But I am old and you are young,
    And I speak a barbarous tongue.
                                         





    A Memory Of Youth



    THE moments passed as at a play;
    I had the wisdom love brings forth;
    I had my share of mother-wit,
    And yet for all that I could say,
    And though I had her praise for it,
    A cloud blown from the cut-throat North
    Suddenly hid Love's moon away.

    Believing every word I said,
    I praised her body and her mind
    Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,
    And pleasure made her cheeks grow red,
    And vanity her footfall light,
    Yet we, for all that praise, could find
    Nothing but darkness overhead.

    We sat as silent as a stone,
    We knew, though she'd not said a word,
    That even the best of love must die,
    And had been savagely undone
    Were it not that Love upon the cry
    Of a most ridiculous little bird
    Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.






    Fallen Majesty



    ALTHOUGH crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,
    And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone,
    Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping-place
    Babbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone.

    These lineaments, a heart that laughter has made sweet,
    These, these remain, but I record what's gone. A crowd
    Will gather, and not know it walks the very street
    Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud
                                         





    Friends



    NOW must I these three praise -
    Three women that have wrought
    What joy is in my days:
    One because no thought,
    Nor those unpassing cares,
    No, not in these fifteen
    Many-times-troubled years,
    Could ever come between
    Mind and delighted mind;
    And one because her hand
    Had strength that could unbind
    What none can understand,
    What none can have and thrive,
    Youth's dreamy load, till she
    So changed me that I live
    Labouring in ecstasy.
    And what of her that took
    All till my youth was gone
    With scarce a pitying look?
    How could I praise that one?
    When day begins to break
    I count my good and bad,
    Being wakeful for her sake,
    Remembering what she had,
    What eagle look still shows,
    While up from my heart's root
    So great a sweetness flows
    I shake from head to foot.
                                         





    The Cold Heaven



    SUDDENLY I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
    That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
    And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
    So wild that every casual thought of that and this
    Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season
    With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
    And I took all thc blame out of all sense and reason,
    Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,
    Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
    Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
    Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
    By the injustice of the skies for punishment?
                                         





    That The Night Come



    SHE lived in storm and strife,
    Her soul had such desire
    For what proud death may bring
    That it could not endure
    The common good of life,
    But lived as 'twere a king
    That packed his marriage day
    With banneret and pennon,
    Trumpet and kettledrum,
    And the outrageous cannon,
    To bundle time away
    That the night come.
                                         





    An Appointment



    BEING out of heart with government
    I took a broken root to fling
    Where the proud, wayward squirrel went,
    Taking delight that he could spring;
    And he, with that low whinnying sound
    That is like laughter, sprang again
    And so to the other tree at a bound.
    Nor the tame will, nor timid brain,
    Nor heavy knitting of the brow
    Bred that fierce tooth and cleanly limb
    And threw him up to laugh on the bough;
    No govermnent appointed him.
                                         





    The Magi



    NOW as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
    In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
    Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
    With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
    And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side,
    And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
    Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
    The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.
                                         


    THE DOLLS



    A DOLL in the doll-maker's house
    Looks at the cradle and bawls:
    'That is an insult to us.'
    But the oldest of all the dolls,
    Who had seen, being kept for show,
    Generations of his sort,
    Out-screams the whole shelf: 'Although
    There's not a man can report
    Evil of this place,
    The man and the woman bring
    Hither, to our disgrace,
    A noisy and filthy thing.'
    Hearing him groan and stretch
    The doll-maker's wife is aware
    Her husband has heard the wretch,
    And crouched by the arm of his chair,
    She murmurs into his ear,
    Head upon shoulder leant:
    'My dear, my dear, O dear.
    It was an accident.'




    A Coat



    I MADE my song a coat
    Covered with embroideries
    Out of old mythologies
    From heel to throat;
    But he fools caught it,
    Wore it in the world's eyes
    As though they'd wrought it.
    Song, let them take it,
    For there's more enterprise
    In walking naked.


    Closing Rhymes



    While I, that reed-throated whisperer
    Who comes at need, although not now as once
    A clear articulation in the air,
    But inwardly, surmise companions
    Beyond the fling of the dull ass's hoof
    - Ben Johnson's phrase - and find when June is come
    At Kyle-na-no under that ancient roof
    A sterner conscience and a friendlier home,
    I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,
    Those undreamt accidents that have made me
    - Seeing that Fame has perished that long while,
    Being but a part of ancient ceremony -
    Notorious, till all my priceless things
    Are but a post the passing dogs defile.