In The Seven Woods

William Butler Yeats

This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com

  • In the Seven Woods
  • The Arrow
  • The Folly Of Being Comforted
  • Old Memory
  • Never Give All The Heart
  • The Withering Of The Boughs
  • Adam's Curse
  • Red Hanrahan's Song About Ireland
  • The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water
  • Under The Moon
  • The Ragged Wood
  • O Do Not Love Too Long
  • The Players Ask For A Blessing On The Psalteries And On Themselves
  • The Happy Townland

  • In the Seven Woods



    I HAVE heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods
    Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees
    Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away
    The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness
    That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile
    Tara uprooted, and new commonness
    Upon the throne and crying about the streets
    And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,
    Because it is alone of all things happy.
    I am contented, for I know that Quiet
    Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart
    Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,
    Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs
    A cloudy quiver over Pairc-na-lee.






    The Arrow



    I THOUGHT of your beauty, and this arrow,
    Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow.
    There's no man may look upon her, no man,
    As when newly grown to be a woman,
    Tall and noble but with face and bosom
    Delicate in colour as apple blossom.
    This beauty's kinder, yet for a reason
    I could weep that the old is out of season.






    The Folly Of Being Comforted



    ONE that is ever kind said yesterday:
    "Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey,
    And little shadows come about her eyes;
    Time can but make it easier to be wise
    Though now it seems impossible, and so
    All that you need is patience."
                                                              Heart cries, "No,
    I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
    Time can but make her beauty over again:
    Because of that great nobleness of hers
    The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
    Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
    When all the wild Summer was in her gaze."

    Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
    You'd know the folly of being comforted.
                                                             





    Old Memory



    O THOUGHT, fly to her when the end of day
    Awakens an old memory, and say,
    "Your strength, that is so lofty and fierce and kind,
    It might call up a new age, calling to mind
    The queens that were imagined long ago,
    Is but half yours: he kneaded in the dough
    Through the long years of youth, and who would have thought
    It all, and more than it all, would come to naught,
    And that dear words meant nothing?" But enough,
    For when we have blamed the wind we can blame love;
    Or, if there needs be more, be nothing said
    That would be harsh for children that have strayed.
                                                             





    Never Give All The Heart



    NEVER give all the heart, for love
    Will hardly seem worth thinking of
    To passionate women if it seem
    Certain, and they never dream
    That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
    For everything that's lovely is
    But a brief, dreamy. Kind delight.
    O never give the heart outright,
    For they, for all smooth lips can say,
    Have given their hearts up to the play.
    And who could play it well enough
    If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
    He that made this knows all the cost,
    For he gave all his heart and lost.
                                                             





    The Withering Of The Boughs



    I CRIED when the moon was mutmuring 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 their dances 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.
                                                             





    Adam's Curse



    WE sat together at one summer's end,
    That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
    And you and I, and talked of poetry.
    I said, "A line will take us hours maybe;
    Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
    Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
    Better go down upon your marrow-bones
    And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
    Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
    For to articulate sweet sounds together
    Is to work harder than all these, and yet
    Be thought an idler by the noisy set
    Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
    The martyrs call the world.'

                                                     And thereupon
    That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
    There's many a one shall find out all heartache
    On finding that her voice is sweet and low
    Replied, "To be born woman is to know -
    Although they do not talk of it at school -
    That we must labour to be beautiful.'

    I said, "It's certain there is no fine thing
    Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
    There have been lovers who thought love should be
    So much compounded of high courtesy
    That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
    precedents out of beautiful old books;
    Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'

    We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
    We saw the last embers of daylight die,
    And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
    A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
    Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
    About the stars and broke in days and years.

    I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
    That you were beautiful, and that I strove
    To love you in the old high way of love;
    That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
    As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
                                                             





    Red Hanrahan's Song About Ireland



    THE old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand,
    Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand;
    Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies,
    But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes
    Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.

    The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knock- narea,
    And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say.
    Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat;
    But we have all bent low and low and kissed the quiet feet
    Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.

    The yellow pool has overflowed high up on Clooth-na-Bare,
    For the wet winds are blowing out of the clinging air;
    Like heavy flooded waters our bodies and our blood;
    But purer than a tall candle before the Holy Rood
    Is Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.
                                                             





    The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water



    I HEARD the old, old men say,
    "Everything alters,
    And one by one we drop away."
    They had hands like claws, and their knees
    Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
    By the waters.
    I heard the old, old men say,
    "All that's beautiful drifts away
    Like the waters."
                                                             





    Under The Moon



    I HAVE no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde,
    Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle,
    Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while;
    Nor Uladh, when Naoise had thrown a sail upon the wind;
    Nor lands that seem too dim to be burdens on the heart:
    Land-under-Wave, where out of the moon's light and the sun's
    Seven old sisters wind the threads of the long-lived ones,
    Land-of-the-Tower, where Aengus has thrown the gates apart,
    And Wood-of-Wonders, where one kills an ox at dawn,
    To find it when night falls laid on a golden bier.
    Therein are many queens like Branwen and Guinevere;
    And Niamh and Laban and Fand, who could change to an otter or fawn,
    And the wood-woman, whose lover was changed to a blue-eyed hawk;
    And whether I go in my dreams by woodland, or dun, or shore,
    Or on the unpeopled waves with kings to pull at the oar,
    I hear the harp-string praise them, or hear their mournful talk.

    Because of something told under the famished horn
    Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day,
    To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dis may,
    Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.
                                                             

    The Ragged Wood



    O HURRY where by water among the trees
    The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
    When they have but looked upon their images -
    Would none had ever loved but you and I!

    Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
    Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
    When the sun looked out of his golden hood? -
    O that none ever loved but you and I!

    O hurty to the ragged wood, for there
    I will drive all those lovers out and cry -
    O my share of the world, O yellow hair!
    No one has ever loved but you and I.
                                                             









    O Do Not Love Too Long



    SWEETHEART, do not love too long:
    I loved long and long,
    And grew to be out of fashion
    Like an old song.
    All through the years of our youth
    Neither could have known
    Their own thought from the other's,
    We were so much at one.
    But O, in a minute she changed -
    O do not love too long,
    Or you will grow out of fashion
    Like an old song.
                                                             



    The Players Ask For A Blessing On The Psalteries And On Themselves



    Three Voices [together]. Hurry to bless the hands that play,
    The mouths that speak, the notes and strings,
    O masters of the glittering town!
    O! lay the shrilly trumpet down,
    Though drunken with the flags that sway
    Over the ramparts and the towers,
    And with the waving of your wings.

    First Voice. Maybe they linger by the way.
    One gathers up his purple gown;
    One leans and mutters by the wall -
    He dreads the weight of mortal hours.

    Second Voice. O no, O no! they hurry down
    Like plovers that have heard the call.

    Third Voice. O kinsmen of the Three in One,
    O kinsmen, bless the hands that play.
    The notes they waken shall live on
    When all this heavy history's done;
    Our hands, our hands must ebb away.

    Three Voices [together]. The proud and careless notes live on,
    But bless our hands that ebb away.
                                                             





    The Happy Townland



    THERE'S many a strong farmer
    Whose heart would break in two,
    If he could see the townland
    That we are riding to;
    Boughs have their fruit and blossom
    At all times of the year;
    Rivers are running over
    With red beer and brown beer.
    An old man plays the bagpipes
    In a golden and silver wood;
    Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,
    Are dancing in a crowd.

    The little fox he murmured,
    "O what of the world's bane?'
    The sun was laughing sweetly,
    The moon plucked at my rein;
    But the little red fox murmured,
    "O do not pluck at his rein,
    He is riding to the townland
    That is the world's bane.'

    When their hearts are so high
    That they would come to blows,
    They unhook rheir heavy swords
    From golden and silver boughs;
    But all that are killed in battle
    Awaken to life again.
    It is lucky that their story
    Is not known among men,
    For O, the strong farmers
    That would let the spade lie,
    Their hearts would be like a cup
    That somebody had drunk dry.

    The little fox he murmured,
    "O what of the world's bane?'
    The sun was laughing sweetly,
    The moon plucked at my rcin;
    But the little red fox murmured,
    "O do not pluck at his rein,
    He is riding to the townland
    That is the world's bane.'

    Michael will unhook his trumpet
    From a bough overhead,
    And blow a little noise
    When the supper has been spread.
    Gabriel will come from the water
    With a fish-tail, and talk
    Of wonders that have happened
    On wet roads where men walk.
    And lift up an old horn
    Of hammered silver, and drink
    Till he has fallen asleep
    Upon the starry brink.

    The little fox he murmured,
    "O what of the world's bane?'
    The sun was laughing sweetly,
    The moon plucked at my rein;
    But the little red fox murmured.
    "O do not pluck at his rein,
    He is riding to the townland
    That is the world's bane.'