The Winding Stair and Other Poems

William Butler Yeats

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

  • In Memory Of Eva Gore-Booth And Con Markiewicz
  • Death
  • A Dialogue of Self and Soul
  • Blood And The Moon
  • Oil And Blood
  • Veronica's Napkin
  • Symbols
  • Spilt Milk
  • The Nineteenth Century And After
  • Statistics
  • Three Movements
  • The Seven Sages
  • The Crazed Moon
  • Coole Park, 1929
  • Coole Park And Ballylee, 1931
  • For Anne Gregory
  • Swift's Epitaph
  • At Algeciras - A Meditaton Upon Death
  • The Choice
  • Mohini Chatterjee
  • Byzantium
  • The Mother Of God
  • Vacillation
  • Quarrel In Old Age
  • The Results Of Thought
  • Gratitude To The Unknown Instructors
  • Remorse For Intemperate Speech
  • Stream And Sun At Glendalough
  • Words For Music Perhaps

  • In Memory Of Eva Gore-Booth And Con Markiewicz



    THE light of evening, Lissadell,
    Great windows open to the south,
    Two girls in silk kimonos, both
    Beautiful, one a gazelle.
    But a raving autumn shears
    Blossom from the summer's wreath;
    The older is condemned to death,
    Pardoned, drags out lonely years
    Conspiring among the ignorant.
    I know not what the younger dreams -
    Some vague Utopia - and she seems,
    When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
    An image of such politics.
    Many a time I think to seek
    One or the other out and speak
    Of that old Georgian mansion, mix
    pictures of the mind, recall
    That table and the talk of youth,
    Two girls in silk kimonos, both
    Beautiful, one a gazelle.
    Dear shadows, now you know it all,
    All the folly of a fight
    With a common wrong or right.
    The innocent and the beautiful.
    Have no enemy but time;
    Arise and bid me strike a match
    And strike another till time catch;
    Should the conflagration climb,
    Run till all the sages know.
    We the great gazebo built,
    They convicted us of guilt;
    Bid me strike a match and blow.




    Death



    NOR dread nor hope attend
    A dying animal;
    A man awaits his end
    Dreading and hoping all;
    Many times he died,
    Many times rose again.
    A great man in his pride
    Confronting murderous men
    Casts derision upon
    Supersession of breath;
    He knows death to the bone -
    Man has created death.




    A Dialogue of Self and Soul



    My Soul I summon to the winding ancient stair;
    Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
    Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
    Upon the breathless starlit air,
    "Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
    Fix every wandering thought upon
    That quarter where all thought is done:
    Who can distinguish darkness from the soul

    My Self. The consecretes blade upon my knees
    Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was,
    Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass
    Unspotted by the centuries;
    That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn
    From some court-lady's dress and round
    The wodden scabbard bound and wound
    Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn

    My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man
    Long past his prime remember things that are
    Emblematical of love and war?
    Think of ancestral night that can,
    If but imagination scorn the earth
    And interllect is wandering
    To this and that and t'other thing,
    Deliver from the crime of death and birth.

    My self. Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it
    Five hundred years ago, about it lie
    Flowers from I know not what embroidery -
    Heart's purple - and all these I set
    For emblems of the day against the tower
    Emblematical of the night,
    And claim as by a soldier's right
    A charter to commit the crime once more.

    My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows
    And falls into the basin of the mind
    That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
    For intellect no longer knows
    Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known -
    That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
    Only the dead can be forgiven;
    But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

    II

    My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop.
    What matter if the ditches are impure?
    What matter if I live it all once more?
    Endure that toil of growing up;
    The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
    Of boyhood changing into man;
    The unfinished man and his pain
    Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;

    The finished man among his enemies? -
    How in the name of Heaven can he escape
    That defiling and disfigured shape
    The mirror of malicious eyes
    Casts upon his eyes until at last
    He thinks that shape must be his shape?
    And what's the good of an escape
    If honour find him in the wintry blast?

    I am content to live it all again
    And yet again, if it be life to pitch
    Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,
    A blind man battering blind men;
    Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
    The folly that man does
    Or must suffer, if he woos
    A proud woman not kindred of his soul.

    I am content to follow to its source
    Every event in action or in thought;
    Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
    When such as I cast out remorse
    So great a sweetness flows into the breast
    We must laugh and we must sing,
    We are blest by everything,
    Everything we look upon is blest.




    Blood And The Moon



    I

    BLESSED be this place,
    More blessed still this tower;
    A bloody, arrogant power
    Rose out of the race
    Uttering, mastering it,
    Rose like these walls from these
    Storm-beaten cottages -
    In mockery I have set
    A powerful emblem up,
    And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
    In mockery of a time
    HaIf dead at the top.


    II

    Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
    An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the sun's journey and the moon's;
    And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers he called them once.

    I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
    This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my ancestral stair;
    That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there.

    Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind
    Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had dragged him down into mankind,
    Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his mind,

    And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a tree,
    That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, century after century,
    Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality;

    And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a dream,
    That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its farrow that so solid seem,
    Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its theme;

    Saeva Indignatio and the labourer's hire,
    The strength that gives our blood and state magnanimity of its own desire;
    Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual fire.


    III

    The purity of the unclouded moon
    Has flung its atrowy shaft upon the floor.
    Seven centuries have passed and it is pure,
    The blood of innocence has left no stain.
    There, on blood-saturated ground, have stood
    Soldier, assassin, executioner.
    Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear
    Or out of abstract hatred, and shed blood,
    But could not cast a single jet thereon.
    Odour of blood on the ancestral stair!
    And we that have shed none must gather there
    And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon.


    IV

    Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling,
    And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies,
    Tortoiseshell butterflies, peacock butterflies,
    A couple of night-moths are on the wing.
    Is every modern nation like the tower,
    Half dead at the top? No matter what I said,
    For wisdom is the property of the dead,
    A something incompatible with life; and power,
    Like everything that has the stain of blood,
    A property of the living; but no stain
    Can come upon the visage of the moon
    When it has looked in glory from a cloud.



    Oil And Blood



    IN tombs of gold and lapis lazuli
    Bodies of holy men and women exude
    Miraculous oil, odour of violet.

    But under heavy loads of trampled clay
    Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
    Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.




    Veronica's Napkin



    THE Heavenly Circuit; Berenice's Hair;
    Tent-pole of Eden; the tent's drapery;
    Symbolical glory of thc earth and air!
    The Father and His angelic hierarchy
    That made the magnitude and glory there
    Stood in the circuit of a needle's eye.

    Some found a different pole, and where it stood
    A pattern on a napkin dipped in blood.




    Symbols



    A STORM BEATEN old watch-tower,
    A blind hermit rings the hour.

    All-destroying sword-blade still
    Carried by the wandering fool.

    Gold-sewn silk on the sword-blade,
    Beauty and fool together laid.




    Spilt Milk



    WE that have done and thought,
    That have thought and done,
    Must ramble, and thin out
    Like milk spilt on a stone.




    The Nineteenth Century And After



    THOUGH the great song return no more
    There's keen delight in what we have:
    The rattle of pebbles on the shore
    Under the receding wave.




    Statistics



    "THOSE Platonists are a curse,' he said,
    "God's fire upon the wane,
    A diagram hung there instead,
    More women born than men.'




    Three Movements



    SHAKESPEAREAN fish swam the sea, far away from land;
    Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand;
    What are all those fish that lie gasping on the strand?




    The Seven Sages



    The First. My great-grandfather spoke to Edmund Burke
      In Grattan's house.
    The Second. My great-grandfather shared
      A pot-house bench with Oliver Goldsmith once.
    The Third. My great-grandfather's father talked of music,
      Drank tar-water with the Bishop of Cloyne.
    The Fourth. But mine saw Stella once.
    The Fifth. Whence came our thought?
    The Sixth. From four great minds that hated Whiggery.
    The Fifth. Burke was a Whig.
    The Sixth. Whether they knew or not,
      Goldsmith and Burke, Swift and the Bishop of Cloyne
      All hated Whiggery; but what is Whiggery?
      A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind
      That never looked out of the eye of a saint
      Or out of drunkard's eye.
    The Seventh. All's Whiggery now,
      But we old men are massed against the world.
    The First. American colonies, Ireland, France and India
      Harried, and Burke's great melody against it.
    The Second. Oliver Goldsmith sang what he had seen,
      Roads full of beggars, cattle in the fields,
      But never saw the trefoil stained with blood,
      The avenging leaf those fields raised up against it.
    The Fourth. The tomb of Swift wears it away.
    The Third. A voice
      Soft as the rustle of a reed from Cloyne
      That gathers volume; now a thunder-clap.
    The Sixtb. What schooling had these four?
    The Seventh. They walked the roads
      Mimicking what they heard, as children mimic;
      They understood that wisdom comes of beggary.

    The Crazed Moon



    CRAZED through much child-bearing
    The moon is staggering in the sky;
    Moon-struck by the despairing
    Glances of her wandering eye
    We grope, and grope in vain,
    For children born of her pain.

    Children dazed or dead!
    When she in all her virginal pride
    First trod on the mountain's head
    What stir ran through the countryside
    Where every foot obeyed her glance!
    What manhood led the dance!

    Fly-catchers of the moon,
    Our hands are blenched, our fingers seem
    But slender needles of bone;
    Blenched by that malicious dream
    They are spread wide that each
    May rend what comes in reach.




    Coole Park, 1929



    I MEDITATE upon a swallow's flight,
    Upon a aged woman and her house,
    A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
    Although that western cloud is luminous,
    Great works constructed there in nature's spite
    For scholars and for poets after us,
    Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
    A dance-like glory that those walls begot.

    There Hyde before he had beaten into prose
    That noble blade the Muses buckled on,
    There one that ruffled in a manly pose
    For all his timid heart, there that slow man,
    That meditative man, John Synge, and those
    Impetuous men, Shawe-Taylor and Hugh Lane,
    Found pride established in humility,
    A scene well Set and excellent company.

    They came like swallows and like swallows went,
    And yet a woman's powerful character
    Could keep a Swallow to its first intent;
    And half a dozen in formation there,
    That seemed to whirl upon a compass-point,
    Found certainty upon the dreaming air,
    The intellectual sweetness of those lines
    That cut through time or cross it withershins.

    Here, traveller, scholar, poet, take your stand
    When all those rooms and passages are gone,
    When nettles wave upon a shapeless mound
    And saplings root among the broken stone,
    And dedicate - eyes bent upon the ground,
    Back turned upon the brightness of the sun
    And all the sensuality of the shade -
    A moment's memory to that laurelled head.


    Coole Park And Ballylee, 1931



    UNDER my window-ledge the waters race,
    Otters below and moor-hens on the top,
    Run for a mile undimmed in Heaven's face
    Then darkening through "dark' Raftery's "cellar' drop,
    Run underground, rise in a rocky place
    In Coole demesne, and there to finish up
    Spread to a lake and drop into a hole.
    What's water but the generated soul?

    Upon the border of that lake's a wood
    Now all dry sticks under a wintry sun,
    And in a copse of beeches there I stood,
    For Nature's pulled her tragic buskin on
    And all the rant's a mirror of my mood:
    At sudden thunder of the mounting swan
    I turned about and looked where branches break
    The glittering reaches of the flooded lake.

    Another emblem there! That stormy white
    But seems a concentration of the sky;
    And, like the soul, it sails into the sight
    And in the morning's gone, no man knows why;
    And is so lovely that it sets to right
    What knowledge or its lack had set awry,
    So atrogantly pure, a child might think
    It can be murdered with a spot of ink.

    Sound of a stick upon the floor, a sound
    From somebody that toils from chair to chair;
    Beloved books that famous hands have bound,
    Old marble heads, old pictures everywhere;
    Great rooms where travelled men and children found
    Content or joy; a last inheritor
    Where none has reigned that lacked a name and fame
    Or out of folly into folly came.

    A spot whereon the founders lived and died
    Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees,
    Or gardens rich in memory glorified
    Marriages, alliances and families,
    And every bride's ambition satisfied.
    Where fashion or mere fantasy decrees
    We shift about - all that great glory spent -
    Like some poor Arab tribesman and his tent.

    We were the last romantics - chose for theme
    Traditional sanctity and loveliness;
    Whatever's written in what poets name
    The book of the people; whatever most can bless
    The mind of man or elevate a rhyme;
    But all is changed, that high horse riderless,
    Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode
    Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood.

    For Anne Gregory



    "NEVER shall a young man,
    Thrown into despair
    By those great honey-coloured
    Ramparts at your ear,
    Love you for yourself alone
    And not your yellow hair."

    "But I can get a hair-dye
    And set such colour there,
    Brown, or black, or carrot,
    That young men in despair
    May love me for myself alone
    And not my yellow hair."

    "I heard an old religious man
    But yesternight declare
    That he had found a text to prove
    That only God, my dear,
    Could love you for yourself alone
    And not your yellow hair."

    Swift's Epitaph



    SWIFT has sailed into his rest;
    Savage indignation there
    Cannot lacerate his breast.
    Imitate him if you dare,
    World-besotted traveller; he
    Served human liberty.

    At Algeciras - A Meditaton Upon Death



    THE heron-billed pale cattle-birds
    That feed on some foul parasite
    Of the Moroccan flocks and herds
    Cross the narrow Straits to light
    In the rich midnight of the garden trees
    Till the dawn break upon those mingled seas.

    Often at evening when a boy
    Would I carry to a friend -
    Hoping more substantial joy
    Did an older mind commend -
    Not such as are in Newton's metaphor,
    But actual shells of Rosses' level shore.

    Greater glory in the Sun,
    An evening chill upon the air,
    Bid imagination run
    Much on the Great Questioner;
    What He can question, what if questioned I
    Can with a fitting confidence reply.




    The Choice



    The intellect of man is forced to choose
    perfection of the life, or of the work,
    And if it take the second must refuse
    A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
    When all that story's finished, what's the news?
    In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
    That old perplexity an empty purse,
    Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.




    Mohini Chatterjee



    I ASKED if I should pray.
    But the Brahmin said,
    `pray for nothing, say
    Every night in bed,
    "I have been a king,
    I have been a slave,
    Nor is there anything.
    Fool, rascal, knave,
    That I have not been,
    And yet upon my breast
    A myriad heads have lain."'

    That he might Set at rest
    A boy's turbulent days
    Mohini Chatterjee
    Spoke these, or words like these,
    I add in commentary,
    "Old lovers yet may have
    All that time denied -
    Grave is heaped on grave
    That they be satisfied -
    Over the blackened earth
    The old troops parade,
    Birth is heaped on Birth
    That such cannonade
    May thunder time away,
    Birth-hour and death-hour meet,
    Or, as great sages say,
    Men dance on deathless feet.'

    Byzantium



    THE unpurged images of day recede;
    The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
    Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
    After great cathedral gong;
    A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
    All that man is,
    All mere complexities,
    The fury and the mire of human veins.

    Before me floats an image, man or shade,
    Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
    For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
    May unwind the winding path;
    A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
    Breathless mouths may summon;
    I hail the superhuman;
    I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

    Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
    More miraclc than bird or handiwork,
    Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
    Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
    Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
    In glory of changeless metal
    Common bird or petal
    And all complexities of mire or blood.

    At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
    Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
    Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
    Where blood-begotten spirits come
    And all complexities of fury leave,
    Dying into a dance,
    An agony of trance,
    An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

    Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
    Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
    The golden smithies of the Emperor!
    Marbles of the dancing floor
    Break bitter furies of complexity,
    Those images that yet
    Fresh images beget,
    That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

    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?

    Vacillation



    I
    BETWEEN extremities
    Man runs his course;
    A brand, or flaming breath.
    Comes to destroy
    All those antinomies
    Of day and night;
    The body calls it death,
    The heart remorse.
    But if these be right
    What is joy?

    II
    A tree there is that from its topmost bough
    Is half all glittering flame and half all green
    Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
    And half is half and yet is all the scene;
    And half and half consume what they renew,
    And he that Attis' image hangs between
    That staring fury and the blind lush leaf
    May know not what he knows, but knows not grief

    III
    Get all the gold and silver that you can,
    Satisfy ambition, animate
    The trivial days and ram them with the sun,
    And yet upon these maxims meditate:
    All women dote upon an idle man
    Although their children need a rich estate;
    No man has ever lived that had enough
    Of children's gratitude or woman's love.

    No longer in Lethean foliage caught
    Begin the preparation for your death
    And from the fortieth winter by that thought
    Test every work of intellect or faith,
    And everything that your own hands have wrought
    And call those works extravagance of breath
    That are not suited for such men as come
    proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.

    IV
    My fiftieth year had come and gone,
    I sat, a solitary man,
    In a crowded London shop,
    An open book and empty cup
    On the marble table-top.
    While on the shop and street I gazed
    My body of a sudden blazed;
    And twenty minutes more or less
    It seemed, so great my happiness,
    That I was blessed and could bless.

    V
    Although the summer Sunlight gild
    Cloudy leafage of the sky,
    Or wintry moonlight sink the field
    In storm-scattered intricacy,
    I cannot look thereon,
    Responsibility so weighs me down.

    Things said or done long years ago,
    Or things I did not do or say
    But thought that I might say or do,
    Weigh me down, and not a day
    But something is recalled,
    My conscience or my vanity appalled.

    VI
    A rivery field spread out below,
    An odour of the new-mown hay
    In his nostrils, the great lord of Chou
    Cried, casting off the mountain snow,
    `Let all things pass away.'

    Wheels by milk-white asses drawn
    Where Babylon or Nineveh
    Rose; some conquer drew rein
    And cried to battle-weary men,
    `Let all things pass away.'

    From man's blood-sodden heart are sprung
    Those branches of the night and day
    Where the gaudy moon is hung.
    What's the meaning of all song?
    `Let all things pass away.'

    VII
    The Soul. Seek out reality, leave things that seem.
    The Heart. What, be a singer born and lack a theme?
    The Soul. Isaiah's coal, what more can man desire?
    The Heart. Struck dumb in the simplicity of fire!
    The Soul. Look on that fire, salvation walks within.
    The Heart. What theme had Homer but original sin?

    VIII
    Must we part, Von Hugel, though much alike, for we
    Accept the miracles of the saints and honour sanctity?
    The body of Saint Teresa lies undecayed in tomb,
    Bathed in miraculous oil, sweet odours from it come,
    Healing from its lettered slab. Those self-same hands perchance
    Eternalised the body of a modern saint that once
    Had scooped out pharaoh's mummy. I - though heart might find relief
    Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief
    What seems most welcome in the tomb - play a pre-destined part.
    Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
    The lion and the honeycomb, what has Scripture said?
    So get you gone, Von Hugel, though with blessings on your head.

    Quarrel In Old Age



    WHERE had her sweetness gone?
    What fanatics invent
    In this blind bitter town,
    Fantasy or incident
    Not worth thinking of,
    put her in a rage.
    I had forgiven enough
    That had forgiven old age.

    All lives that has lived;
    So much is certain;
    Old sages were not deceived:
    Somewhere beyond the curtain
    Of distorting days
    Lives that lonely thing
    That shone before these eyes
    Targeted, trod like Spring.

    The Results Of Thought



    ACQUAINTANCE; companion;
    One dear brilliant woman;
    The best-endowed, the elect,
    All by their youth undone,
    All, all, by that inhuman
    Bitter glory wrecked.

    But I have straightened out
    Ruin, wreck and wrack;
    I toiled long years and at length
    Came to so deep a thought
    I can summon back
    All their wholesome strength.

    What images are these
    That turn dull-eyed away,
    Or Shift Time's filthy load,
    Straighten aged knees,
    Hesitate or stay?
    What heads shake or nod?

    Gratitude To The Unknown Instructors



    WHAT they undertook to do
    They brought to pass;
    All things hang like a drop of dew
    Upon a blade of grass.

    Remorse For Intemperate Speech



    I RANTED to the knave and fool,
    But outgrew that school,
    Would transform the part,
    Fit audience found, but cannot rule
    My fanatic heart.

    I sought my betters: though in each
    Fine manners, liberal speech,
    Turn hatred into sport,
    Nothing said or done can reach
    My fanatic heart.

    Out of Ireland have we come.
    Great hatred, little room,
    Maimed us at the start.
    I carry from my mother's womb
    A fanatic heart.

    Stream And Sun At Glendalough



    THROUGH intricate motions ran
    Stream and gliding sun
    And all my heart seemed gay:
    Some stupid thing that I had done
    Made my attention stray.

    Repentance keeps my heart impure;
    But what am I that dare
    Fancy that I can
    Better conduct myself or have more
    Sense than a common man?

    What motion of the sun or stream
    Or eyelid shot the gleam
    That pierced my body through?
    What made me live like these that seem
    Self-born, born anew?

    Words For Music Perhaps




    I. Crazy Jane And The Bishop



    BRING me to the blasted oak
    That I, midnight upon the stroke,
    (All find safety in the tomb.)
    May call down curses on his head
    Because of my dear Jack that's dead.
    Coxcomb was the least he said:
    The solid man and the coxcomb.

    Nor was he Bishop when his ban
    Banished Jack the Journeyman,
    (All find safety in the tomb.)
    Nor so much as parish priest,
    Yet he, an old book in his fist,
    Cried that we lived like beast and beast:
    The solid man and the coxcomb.

    The Bishop has a skin, God knows,
    Wrinkled like the foot of a goose,
    (All find safety in the tomb.)
    Nor can he hide in holy black
    The heron's hunch upon his back,
    But a birch-tree stood my Jack:
    The solid man and the coxcomb.

    Jack had my virginity,
    And bids me to the oak, for he
    (all find safety in the tomb.)
    Wanders out into the night
    And there is shelter under it,
    But should that other come, I spit:
    The solid man and the coxcomb.

    II. Crazy Jane Reproved



    I CARE not what the sailors say:
    All those dreadful thunder-stones,
    All that storm that blots the day
    Can but show that Heaven yawns;
    Great Europa played the fool
    That changed a lover for a bull.
    Fol de rol, fol de rol.

    To round that shell's elaborate whorl,
    Adorning every secret track
    With the delicate mother-of-pearl,
    Made the joints of Heaven crack:
    So never hang your heart upon
    A roaring, ranting journeyman.
    Fol de rol, fol de rol.


    III. Crazy Jane On The Day Of Judgment



    "LOVE is all
    Unsatisfied
    That cannot take the whole
    Body and soul';
    And that is what Jane said.

    "Take the sour
    If you take me
    I can scoff and lour
    And scold for an hour.'
    "That's certainly the case,' said he.

    "Naked I lay,
    The grass my bed;
    Naked and hidden away,
    That black day';
    And that is what Jane said.

    "What can be shown?
    What true love be?
    All could be known or shown
    If Time were but gone.'
    "That's certainly the case,' said he.




    IV. Crazy Jane And Jack The Journeyman



    I KNOW, although when looks meet
    I tremble to the bone,
    The more I leave the door unlatched
    The sooner love is gone,
    For love is but a skein unwound
    Between the dark and dawn.

    A lonely ghost the ghost is
    That to God shall come;
    I - love's skein upon the ground,
    My body in the tomb -
    Shall leap into the light lost
    In my mother's womb.

    But were I left to lie alone
    In an empty bed,
    The skein so bound us ghost to ghost
    When he turned his head
    passing on the road that night,
    Mine must walk when dead.



    V. Crazy Jane On God



    THAT lover of a night
    Came when he would,
    Went in the dawning light
    Whether I would or no;
    Men come, men go;
    All things remain in God.

    Banners choke the sky;
    Men-at-arms tread;
    Armoured horses neigh
    In the narrow pass:
    All things remain in God.

    Before their eyes a house
    That from childhood stood
    Uninhabited, ruinous,
    Suddenly lit up
    From door to top:
    All things remain in God.

    I had wild Jack for a lover;
    Though like a road
    That men pass over
    My body makes no moan
    But sings on:
    All things remain in God.




    VI. Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop



    I MET the Bishop on the road
    And much said he and I.
    "Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
    Those veins must soon be dry;
    Live in a heavenly mansion,
    Not in some foul sty.'

    "Fair and foul are near of kin,
    And fair needs foul,' I cried.
    "My friends are gone, but that's a truth
    Nor grave nor bed denied,
    Learned in bodily lowliness
    And in the heart's pride.

    "A woman can be proud and stiff
    When on love intent;
    But Love has pitched his mansion in
    The place of excrement;
    For nothing can be sole or whole
    That has not been rent.'

    VII. Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks At The Dancers



    I FOUND that ivory image there
    Dancing with her chosen youth,
    But when he wound her coal-black hair
    As though to strangle her, no scream
    Or bodily movement did I dare,
    Eyes under eyelids did so gleam;
    Love is like the lion's tooth.

    When She, and though some said she played
    I said that she had danced heart's truth,
    Drew a knife to strike him dead,
    I could but leave him to his fate;
    For no matter what is said
    They had all that had their hate;
    Love is like the lion's tooth.

    Did he die or did she die?
    Seemed to die or died they both?
    God be with the times when I
    Cared not a thraneen for what chanced
    So that I had the limbs to try
    Such a dance as there was danced -
    Love is like the lion's tooth.

    VIII. Girl's Song



    I WENT out alone
    To sing a song or two,
    My fancy on a man,
    And you know who.

    Another came in sight
    That on a stick relied
    To hold himself upright;
    I sat and cried.

    And that was all my song -
    When everything is told,
    Saw I an old man young
    Or young man old?

    IX. Young Man's Song



    "SHE will change,' I cried.
    "Into a withered crone.'
    The heart in my side,
    That so still had lain,
    In noble rage replied
    And beat upon the bone:

    "Uplift those eyes and throw
    Those glances unafraid:
    She would as bravely show
    Did all the fabric fade;
    No withered crone I saw
    Before the world was made.'

    Abashed by that report,
    For the heart cannot lie,
    I knelt in the dirt.
    And all shall bend the knee
    To my offended heart
    Until it pardon me.

    X. Her Anxiety



    EARTH in beauty dressed
    Awaits returning spring.
    All true love must die,
    Alter at the best
    Into some lesser thing.
    Prove that I lie.

    Such body lovers have,
    Such exacting breath,
    That they touch or sigh.
    Every touch they give,
    Love is nearer death.
    Prove that I lie.

    XI. His Confidence



    UNDYING love to buy
    I wrote upon
    The corners of this eye
    All wrongs done.
    What payment were enough
    For undying love?

    I broke my heart in two
    So hard I struck.
    What matter? for I know
    That out of rock,
    Out of a desolate source,
    Love leaps upon its course.

    XII. Love's Loneliness



    OLD fathers, great-grandfathers,
    Rise as kindred should.
    If ever lover's loneliness
    Came where you stood,
    Pray that Heaven protect us
    That protect your blood.

    The mountain throws a shadow,
    Thin is the moon's horn;
    What did we remember
    Under the ragged thorn?
    Dread has followed longing,
    And our hearts are torn.

    XIII. Her Dream



    I DREAMED as in my bed I lay,
    All night's fathomless wisdom come,
    That I had shorn my locks away
    And laid them on Love's lettered tomb:
    But something bore them out of sight
    In a great tumult of the air,
    And after nailed upon the night
    Berenice's burning hair.

    XIV. His Bargain



    WHO talks of Plato's spindle;
    What set it whirling round?
    Eternity may dwindle,
    Time is unwound,
    Dan and Jerry Lout
    Change their loves about.
    However they may take it,
    Before the thread began
    I made, and may not break it
    When the last thread has run,
    A bargain with that hair
    And all the windings there.


    XV. Three Things



    `O CRUEL Death, give three things back,'
    Sang a bone upon the shore;
    `A child found all a child can lack,
    Whether of pleasure or of rest,
    Upon the abundance of my breast':
    A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.

    `Three dear things that women know,'
    Sang a bhone upon the shore;
    `A man if I but held him so
    When my body was alive
    Found all the pleasure that life gave':
    A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.

    `The third thing that I think of yet,'
    Sang a bone upon the shore,
    `Is that morning when I met
    Face to face my rightful man
    And did after stretch and yawn':
    A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.

    XVI. Lullaby



    BELOVED, may your sleep be sound
    That have found it where you fed.
    What were all the world's alarms
    To mighty paris when he found
    Sleep upon a golden bed
    That first dawn in Helen's arms?

    Sleep, beloved, such a sleep
    As did that wild Tristram know
    When, the potion's work being done,
    Roe could run or doe could leap
    Under oak and beechen bough,
    Roe could leap or doe could run;

    Such a sleep and sound as fell
    Upon Eurotas' grassy bank
    When the holy bird, that there
    Accomplished his predestined will,
    From the limbs of Leda sank
    But not from her protecting care.

    XVII. After Long Silence



    SPEECH after long silence; it is right,
    All other lovers being estranged or dead,
    Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
    The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
    That we descant and yet again descant
    Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
    Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
    We loved each other and were ignorant.

    XVIII. Mad As The Mist And Snow



    BOLT and bar the shutter,
    For the foul winds blow:
    Our minds are at their best this night,
    And I seem to know
    That everything outside us is
    Mad as the mist and snow.

    Horace there by Homer stands,
    Plato stands below,
    And here is Tully's open page.
    How many years ago
    Were you and I unlettered lads
    Mad as the mist and snow?

    You ask what makes me sigh, old friend,
    What makes me shudder so?
    I shudder and I sigh to think
    That even Cicero
    And many-minded Homer were
    Mad as the mist and snow.

    XIX. Those Dancing Days Are Gone



    COME, let me sing into your ear;
    Those dancing days are gone,
    All that silk and satin gear;
    Crouch upon a stone,
    Wrapping that foul body up
    In as foul a rag:
    I carry the sun in a golden cup.
    The moon in a silver bag.

    Curse as you may I sing it through;
    What matter if the knave
    That the most could pleasure you,
    The children that he gave,
    Are somewhere sleeping like a top
    Under a marble flag?
    I carry the sun in a golden cup.
    The moon in a silver bag.

    I thought it out this very day.
    Noon upon the clock,
    A man may put pretence away
    Who leans upon a stick,
    May sing, and sing until he drop,
    Whether to maid or hag:
    I carry the sun in a golden cup,
    The moon in a silver bag.

    XX. `I Am Of Ireland'



    I AM of Ireland,
    And the Holy Land of Ireland,
    And time runs on,' cried she.
    "Come out of charity,
    Come dance with me in Ireland.'

    One man, one man alone
    In that outlandish gear,
    One solitary man
    Of all that rambled there
    Had turned his stately head.
    That is a long way off,
    And time runs on,' he said,
    "And the night grows rough.'

    I am of Ireland,
    And the Holy Land of Ireland,
    And time runs on,' cried she.
    "Come out of charity
    And dance with me in Ireland.'

    The fiddlers are all thumbs,
    Or the fiddle-string accursed,
    The drums and the kettledrums
    And the trumpets all are burst,
    And the trombone,' cried he,
    "The trumpet and trombone,'
    And cocked a malicious eye,
    "But time runs on, runs on.'

    I am of Ireland,
    And the Holy Land of Ireland,
    And time runs on,' cried she.
    "Come out of charity
    And dance with me in Ireland.'


    XXI. The Dancer At Cruachan And Cro-Patrick



    I, PROCLAIMING that there is
    Among birds or beasts or men
    One that is perfect or at peace.
    Danced on Cruachan's windy plain,
    Upon Cro-patrick sang aloud;
    All that could run or leap or swim
    Whether in wood, water or cloud,
    Acclaiming, proclaiming, declaiming Him.

    XXII. Tom The Lunatic



    SANG old Tom the lunatic
    That sleeps under the canopy:
    "What change has put my thoughts astray
    And eyes that had s-o keen a sight?
    What has turned to smoking wick
    Nature's pure unchanging light?

    "Huddon and Duddon and Daniel O'Leary.
    Holy Joe, the beggar-man,
    Wenching, drinking, still remain
    Or sing a penance on the road;
    Something made these eyeballs weary
    That blinked and saw them in a shroud.

    "Whatever stands in field or flood,
    Bird, beast, fish or man,
    Mare or stallion, cock or hen,
    Stands in God's unchanging eye
    In all the vigour of its blood;
    In that faith I live or die."

    XXIII. Tom At Cruachan



    ON Cruachan's plain slept he
    That must sing in a rhyme
    What most could shake his soul:
    "The stallion Eternit
    Mounted the mare of Time,
    'Gat the foal of the world.'

    XXIV. Old Tom Again



    THINGS out of perfection sail,
    And all their swelling canvas wear,
    Nor shall the self-begotten fail
    Though fantastic men suppose
    Building-yard and stormy shore,
    Winding-sheet and swaddling - clothes.

    XXV. The Delphic Oracle Upon Plotinus



    BEHOLD that great Plotinus swim,
    Buffeted by such seas;
    Bland Rhadamanthus beckons him,
    But the Golden Race looks dim,
    Salt blood blocks his eyes.
    Scattered on the level grass
    Or winding through the grove
    plato there and Minos pass,
    There stately Pythagoras
    And all the choir of Love.