Delphi Complete Poetry and Plays of W. B. Yeats (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Read online

  “O saddest harp in all the world,

  “Sleep there till the moon and the stars die!”

  And now still sad we came to where

  A beautiful young man dreamed within

  A house of wattles, clay, and skin;

  One hand upheld his beardless chin,

  And one a sceptre flashing out

  Wild flames of red and gold and blue,

  Like to a merry wandering rout

  Of dancers leaping in the air;

  And men and maidens knelt them there

  And showed their eyes with teardrops dim,

  And with low murmurs prayed to him,

  And kissed the sceptre with red lips,

  And touched it with their finger-tips.

  He held that flashing sceptre up.

  “Joy drowns the twilight in the dew,

  “And fills with stars night’s purple cup,

  “And wakes the sluggard seeds of corn,

  “And stirs the young kid’s budding horn.

  “And makes the infant ferns unwrap,

  “And for the peewit paints his cap,

  “And rolls along the unwieldy sun,

  “And makes the little planets run:

  “And if joy were not on the earth,

  “There were an end of change and birth,

  “And earth and heaven and hell would die,

  “And in some gloomy barrow lie

  “Folded like a frozen fly;

  “Then mock at Death and Time with glances

  “And wavering arms and wandering dances.

  “Men’s hearts of old were drops of flame

  “That from the saffron morning came,

  “Or drops of silver joy that fell

  “Out of the moon’s pale twisted shell;

  “But now hearts cry that hearts are slaves,

  “And toss and turn in narrow caves;

  “But here there is nor law nor rule,

  “Nor have hands held a weary tool;

  “And here there is nor Change nor Death,

  “But only kind and merry breath,

  “For joy is God and God is joy.”

  With one long glance on maid and boy

  And the pale blossom of the moon,

  He fell into a Druid swoon.

  And in a wild and sudden dance

  We mocked at Time and Fate and Chance

  And swept out of the wattled hall

  And came to where the dewdrops fall

  Among the foamdrops of the sea,

  And there we hushed the revelry;

  And, gathering on our brows a frown,

  Bent all our swaying bodies down,

  And to the waves that glimmer by

  That sloping green De Danaan sod

  Sang “God is joy and joy is God.

  “And things that have grown sad are wicked,

  “And things that fear the dawn of the morrow

  “Or the gray wandering osprey Sorrow.”

  We danced to where in the winding thicket

  The damask roses, bloom on bloom,

  Like crimson meteors hang in the gloom,

  And bending over them softly said,

  Bending over them in the dance,

  With a swift and friendly glance

  From dewy eyes: “Upon the dead

  “Fall the leaves of other roses,

  “On the dead dim earth encloses:

  “But never, never on our graves,

  “Heaped beside the glimmering waves,

  “Shall fall the leaves of damask roses.

  “For neither Death nor Change comes near us,

  “And all listless hours fear us,

  “And we fear no dawning morrow,

  “Nor the gray wandering osprey Sorrow.”

  The dance wound through the windless woods;

  The ever-summered solitudes;

  Until the tossing arms grew still

  Upon the woody central hill;

  And, gathered in a panting band,

  We flung on high each waving hand,

  And sang unto the starry broods:

  In our raised eyes there flashed a glow

  Of milky brightness to and fro

  As thus our song arose: “You stars,

  “Across your wandering ruby cars

  “Shake the loose reins: you slaves of God

  “He rules you with an iron rod,

  “He holds you with an iron bond,

  “Each one woven to the other,

  “Each one woven to his brother

  “Like bubbles in a frozen pond;

  “But we in a lonely land abide

  “Unchainable as the dim tide,

  “With hearts that know nor law nor rule,

  “And hands that hold no wearisome tool

  “Folded in love that fears no morrow,

  “Nor the gray wandering osprey Sorrow.”

  O Patric! for a hundred years

  I chased upon that woody shore

  The deer, the badger, and the boar.

  O Patric! for a hundred years

  At evening on the glimmering sands,

  Beside the piled-up hunting spears,

  These now outworn and withered hands

  Wrestled among the island bands.

  O Patric! for a hundred years

  We went a-fishing in long boats

  With bending sterns and bending bows,

  And carven figures on their prows

  Of bitterns and fish-eating stoats.

  O Patric! for a hundred years

  The gentle Niam was my wife;

  But now two things devour my life;

  The things that most of all I hate;

  Fasting and prayers.

  S. PATRIC

  Tell on.

  USHEEN

  Yes, yes,

  For these were ancient Usheen’s fate

  Loosed long ago from heaven’s gate,

  For his last days to lie in wait.

  When one day by the tide I stood,

  I found in that forgetfulness

  Of dreamy foam a staff of wood

  From some dead warrior’s broken lance:

  I turned it in my hands; the stains

  Of war were on it, and I wept,

  Remembering how the Fenians stept

  Along the blood-bedabbled plains,

  Equal to good or grievous chance:

  Thereon young Niam softly came

  And caught my hands, but spake no word

  Save only many times my name,

  In murmurs, like a frighted bird.

  We passed by woods, and lawns of clover,

  And found the horse and bridled him,

  For we knew well the old was over.

  I heard one say “His eyes grow dim

  “With all the ancient sorrow of men”;

  And wrapped in dreams rode out again

  With hoofs of the pale findrinny

  Over the glimmering purple sea:

  Under the golden evening light.

  The immortals moved among the fountains

  By rivers and the woods’ old night;

  Some danced like shadows on the mountains,

  Some wandered ever hand in hand,

  Or sat in dreams on the pale strand;

  Each forehead like an obscure star

  Bent down above each hooked knee:

  And sang, and with a dreamy gaze

  Watched where the sun in a saffron blaze

  Was slumbering half in the sea ways;

  And, as they sang, the painted birds

  Kept time with their bright wings and feet;

  Like drops of honey came their words,

  But fainter than a young lamb’s bleat.

  “An old man stirs the fire to a blaze,

  “In the house of a child, of a friend, of a brother

  “He has over-lingered his welcome; the days,

  “Grown desolate, whisper and sigh to each other;

  “He
hears the storm in the chimney above,

  “And bends to the fire and shakes with the cold,

  “While his heart still dreams of battle and love,

  “And the cry of the hounds on the hills of old.

  “But we are apart in the grassy places,

  “Where care cannot trouble the least of our days,

  “Or the softness of youth be gone from our faces,

  “Or love’s first tenderness die in our gaze.

  “The hare grows old as she plays in the sun

  “And gazes around her with eyes of brightness;

  “Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done

  “She limps along in an aged whiteness;

  “A storm of birds in the Asian trees

  “Like tulips in the air a-winging,

  “And the gentle waves of the summer seas,

  “That raise their heads and wander singing.

  “Must murmur at last ‘Unjust, unjust’;

  “And ‘My speed is a weariness,’ falters the mouse

  “And the kingfisher turns to a ball of dust,

  “And the roof falls in of his tunnelled house.

  “But the love-dew dims our eyes till the day

  “When God shall come from the sea with a sigh

  “And bid the stars drop down from the sky,

  “And the moon like a pale rose wither away.”

  BOOK II

  Now, man of croziers, shadows called our names

  And then away, away, like whirling flames;

  And now fled by, mist-covered, without sound,

  The youth and lady and the deer and hound;

  “Gaze no more on the phantoms,” Niam said,

  And kissed my eyes, and, swaying her bright head

  And her bright body, sang of faery and man

  Before God was or my old line began;

  Wars shadowy, vast, exultant; faeries of old

  Who wedded men with rings of Druid gold;

  And how those lovers never turn their eyes

  Upon the life that fades and flickers and dies,

  But love and kiss on dim shores far away

  Rolled round with music of the sighing spray:

  But sang no more, as when, like a brown bee

  That has drunk full, she crossed the misty sea

  With me in her white arms a hundred years

  Before this day; for now the fall of tears

  Troubled her song.

  I do not know if days

  Or hours passed by, yet hold the morning rays

  Shone many times among the glimmering flowers

  Woven into her hair, before dark towers

  Rose in the darkness, and the white surf gleamed

  About them; and the horse of faery screamed

  And shivered, knowing the Isle of many Fears,

  Nor ceased until white Niam stroked his ears

  And named him by sweet names.

  A foaming tide

  Whitened afar with surge, fan-formed and wide,

  Burst from a great door marred by many a blow

  From mace and sword and pole-axe, long ago

  When gods and giants warred. We rode between

  The seaweed-covered pillars, and the green

  And surging phosphorus alone gave light

  On our dark pathway, till a countless flight

  Of moonlit steps glimmered; and left and right

  Dark statues glimmered over the pale tide

  Upon dark thrones. Between the lids of one

  The imaged meteors had flashed and run

  And had disported in the stilly jet,

  And the fixed stars had dawned and shone and set,

  Since God made Time and Death and Sleep: the other

  Stretched his long arm to where, a misty smother,

  The stream churned, churned, and churned — his lips apart,

  As though he told his never slumbering heart

  Of every foamdrop on its misty way:

  Tying the horse to his vast foot that lay

  Half in the unvesselled sea, we climbed the stairs

  And climbed so long, I thought the last steps were

  Hung from the morning star; when these mild words

  Fanned the delighted air like wings of birds:

  “My brothers spring out of their beds at morn,

  “A-murmur like young partridge: with loud horn

  “They chase the noontide deer;

  “And when the dew-drowned stars hang in the air

  “Look to long fishing-lines, or point and pare

  “An ash-wood hunting spear.

  “O sigh, O fluttering sigh, be kind to me;

  “Flutter along the froth lips of the sea,

  “And shores, the froth lips wet:

  “And stay a little while, and bid them weep:

  “Ah, touch their blue-veined eyelids if they sleep,

  “And shake their coverlet.

  “When you have told how I weep endlessly,

  “Flutter along the froth lips of the sea

  “And home to me again,

  “And in the shadow of my hair lie hid,

  “And tell me how you came to one unbid,

  “The saddest of all men.”

  A maiden with soft eyes like funeral tapers,

  And face that seemed wrought out of moonlit vapours,

  And a sad mouth, that fear made tremulous

  As any ruddy moth, looked down on us;

  And she with a wave-rusted chain was tied

  To two old eagles, full of ancient pride,

  That with dim eyeballs stood on either side.

  Few feathers were on their dishevelled wings,

  For their dim minds were with the ancient things.

  “I bring deliverance,” pearl-pale Niam said.

  “Neither the living, nor the unlabouring dead,

  “Nor the high gods who never lived, may fight

  “My enemy and hope; demons for fright

  “Jabber and scream about him in the night;

  “For he is strong and crafty as the seas

  “That sprang under the Seven Hazel Trees,

  “And I must needs endure and hate and weep,

  “Until the gods and demons drop asleep,

  “Hearing Aed touch the mournful strings of gold.”

  “Is he so dreadful?”

  “Be not over bold,

  “But flee while you may flee from him.”

  Then I:

  “This demon shall be pierced and drop and die,

  “And his loose bulk be thrown in the loud tide.”

  “Flee from him,” pearl-pale Niam weeping cried,

  “For all men flee the demons”; but moved not

  My angry, king remembering soul one jot;

  There was no mightier soul of Heber’s line;

  Now it is old and mouse-like: for a sign

  I burst the chain: still earless, nerveless, blind,

  Wrapped in the things of the unhuman mind,

  In some dim memory or ancient mood

  Still earless, nerveless, blind, the eagles stood.

  And then we climbed the stair to a high door;

  A hundred horsemen on the basalt floor

  Beneath had paced content: we held our way

  And stood within: clothed in a misty ray

  I saw a foam-white seagull drift and float

  Under the roof, and with a straining throat

  Shouted, and hailed him: he hung there a star,

  For no man’s cry shall ever mount so far;

  Not even your God could have thrown down that hall;

  Stabling His unloosed lightnings in their stall,

  He had sat down and sighed with cumbered heart,

  As though His hour were come.

  We sought the part

  That was most distant from the door; green slime

  Made the way slippery, and time on time

  Showed prints of sea-born scales
, while down through it

  The captive’s journeys to and fro were writ

  Like a small river, and, where feet touched, came

  A momentary gleam of phosphorus flame.

  Under the deepest shadows of the hall

  That maiden found a ring hung on the wall,

  And in the ring a torch, and with its flare

  Making a world about her in the air,

  Passed under a dim doorway, out of sight

  And came again, holding a second light

  Burning between her fingers, and in mine

  Laid it and sighed: I held a sword whose shine

  No centuries could dim: and a word ran

  Thereon in Ogham letters, “Mananan”;

  That sea god’s name, who in a deep content

  Sprang dripping, and, with captive demons sent

  Out of the seven-fold seas, built the dark hall

  Rooted in foam and clouds, and cried to all

  The mightier masters of a mightier race;

  And at his cry there came no milk-pale face

  Under a crown of thorns and dark with blood,

  But only exultant faces.

  Niam stood

  With bowed head, trembling when the white blade shone,

  But she whose hours of tenderness were gone

  Had neither hope nor fear. I bade them hide

  Under the shadows till the tumults died

  Of the loud crashing and earth shaking fight,

  Lest they should look upon some dreadful sight;

  And thrust the torch between the slimy flags.

  A dome made out of endless carven jags,

  Where shadowy face flowed into shadowy face,

  Looked down on me; and in the self-same place

  I waited hour by hour, and the high dome,

  Windowless, pillarless, multitudinous home

  Of faces, waited; and the leisured gaze

  Was loaded with the memory of days

  Buried and mighty. When through the great door

  The dawn came in, and glimmered on the floor

  With a pale light, I journeyed round the hall

  And found a door deep sunken in the wall,

  The least of doors; beyond on a dim plain

  A little runnel made a bubbling strain,

  And on the runnel’s stony and bare edge

  A husky demon dry as a withered sedge

  Swayed, crooning to himself an unknown tongue:

  In a sad revelry he sang and swung

  Bacchant and mournful, passing to and fro

  His hand along the runnel’s side, as though