William Butler Yeats     .
         -Ephemera                                                -Never give all the Heart
         -The Stolen Child                                       -No Second Troy
         -To the Rose upon the Road of Time           -September 1913
         -A Faery Song                                            -A Memory of Youth
         -When You are Old                                     -That the Night come
         -To Ireland in the Coming Times                 -A Deep-sworn Vow
         -The Hosting of the Sidhe                           -SIxteen Dead Men
         -Into the Twilight                                       -The Rose Tree
         -The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love       -The Second Coming
         -The Blessed                                              -Death
         -The Secret Rose                                        -The Crazed Moon
         -The Arrow 
   .     . Ephemera    .
             'Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
             Are bowed in sorrow under pendulous lids,
             Because our love is waning.'
                                                             And then she:
             'Although our love is waning, let us stand
             By the lone border of the lake once more,
             Together in that hour of gentleness
             When the poor tired child, Passion, falls asleep:
             How far away the stars seem, and how far
             Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!'
   .
             Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
             While slowly he whose hand held hers replied;
             'Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.'
   .
             The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
             Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
             A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
             Autumn was over him: and now they stood
             On the lone border of the lake once more:
             Turning, he saw that she had  thrust dead leaves
             Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes,
             In bosom and hair.
                                             'Ah, do not mourn,' he said,
             'That we are tired, for other loves await us;
             Hate on and love through unrepining hours.
             Before us lies eternity; our souls
             Are love, and a continual farewell.'
   .     . The Stolen Child    .
             Where dips the rocky highland
             O Sleuth Wood in the lake,
             There lies a leafy island
             Where the flapping herons wake
             The drowsy water-rats;
             There we've hid our faery vats,
             Full of berries
             And of reddest stolen cherries
             Come away, O human child!
             To the waters and the wild
             With a faery, hand in hand,
             For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
   .
             Where the wave of moonlight glosses
             The dim grey sands with light
             Far off by furthest Rosses
             We foot it all the night,
             Weaving olden dances,
             Mingling hands and mingling glances
             Till the moon has taken flight;
             To and fro we leap
             And chase the frothy bubbles,
             While the world is full of troubles
             And is anxious in its sleep.
             Come away, O human child!
             To the waters and the wild
             With a faery, hand in hand,
             For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
   .
             Where the wandering water gushes
             From the hills above Glen-Car,
             In pools among the rushes
             That scarce could bathe a star,
             We seek for slumbering trout
             And whispering in their ears
             Give them unquiet dreams;
             Leaning softly out
             From ferns that drop their tears
             Over the young streams.
             Come away, O human child!
             To the waters and the wild
             With a faery, hand in hand,
             For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
   .
             Away with us he's going,
             The solemn-eyed:
             He'll hear no more the lowing
             Of the calves on the warm hillside
             Or the kettle on the hob
             Sing peace into his breast,
             Or see the the brown mice bob
             Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
             For he comes, the human child,
             To the waters and the wild
             With a faery, hand in hand,
             From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.
   .     . To the Rose upon the Road of Time    .
             Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
             Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:
             Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;
             The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,
             Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;
             And thine own sadness, whereof stars, grown old
             In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea,
             Sing in their high and lonely melody.
             Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate,
             I find under the boughs of love and hate,
             In all poor foolish things that live a day,
             Eternal beauty wandering on her way.
   .
             Come near, come near, come near - Ah, leave me still
             A little space for the rose-breath to fill!
             Lest I no more hear common things that crave;
             The weak worn hiding down in its small cave,
             The field-mouse running by me in the grass,
             And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass;
             But seek alone to hear the strange things said
             By God to the bright hearts of those long dead,
             And learn to chant a tongue men do not know.
             Come near; I would, before my time to go,
             Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:
             Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.
   .      . A Faery Song    .
             Sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania, in their bridal sleep under  a
             Cromlech.
    .
             We who are old, old and gay,
             O so old!
             Thousands of years, thousands of years,
             If all were told:
   .
             Give to these children, new from the world,
             Silence and love;
             And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
             And the stars above:
   .
             Give to these children, new from the world,
             Rest far from men.
             Is anything better, anything better?
             Tell us it then:
   .
             Us who are old, old and gay,
             O so old!
             Thousands of years, thousands of years,
             If all were told.
   .     . When You are Old    .
             When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
             And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
             And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
             Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
   .
             How many loved your moments of glad grace,
             And loved your beauty with love false or true,
             But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
             And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
   .
             And bending down beside the glowing bars,
             Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
             And paced among the mountains overhead
             And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
   .     . To Ireland in the Coming Times    .
             Know, that I would accounted be
             True brother of a company
             That sang, to sweeten Ireland's wrong,
             Ballad and story, rann and song;
             Nor be I any less of them,
             Because the red-rose-bordered hem
             Of her, whose history began
             Before God made the angelic clan,
             Trails all about the written page.
             When Time began to rant and rage
             The measure of her flying feet
             Made Ireland's heart begin to beat;
             And Time bade all his candles flare
             To light a measure here and there;
             And may the thoughts of Ireland brood
             Upon a measured quietude.
   .
             Nor may I less be counted one
             With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,
             Because, to him who ponders well,
             My rhymes more than their rhyming tell
             Of things discovered in the deep,
             Where only body's laid asleep.
             For the elemental creatures go
             About my table to and fro,
             That hurry from unmeasured mind
             To rant and rage in flood and wind;
             Yet he who treads in measured ways
             May surely barter gaze for gaze.
             Man ever journeys on with them
             After the red-rose-bordered hem.
             Ah, faeries dancing under the moon,
             A Druid land, a Druid tune!
   .
             While still I may, I write for you
             The love I lived, the dream I knew.
             From our birthday, until we die,
             Is but the winking of an eye;
             And we, our singing and our love,
             What measurer Time has lit above,
             And all benighted things that go
             About my table to and fro,
             Are passing on to where may be,
             In truth's consuming ecstasy,
             No place for love and dream at all;
             For God goes by with white footfall.
             I cast my heart into my rhymes,
             That you, in the dim coming times,
             May know how my heart went with them
             After the red-rose-bordered hem.
   .     . The Hosting of the Sidhe    .
             The host is riding from Knocknarea
             And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
             Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
             And Niamh calling Away, come away:
             Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
             The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
             Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
             Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,
             Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
             And if any gaze on our rushing band,
             We come between him and the deed of his hand,
             We come between him and the hope of his heart.
             The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,
             And where is there hope or deed as fair?
             Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
             And Niamh calling Away, come away.
   .     . Into the Twilight    .
             Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
             Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
             Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
             Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
   .
             Your mother Eire is always young,
             Dew ever shining and twilight grey;
             Though hope fall from you and love decay,
             Burning in fires of slanderous tongue.
   .
             Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
             For there the mystical brotherhoods
             Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
             And river and stream work out their will;
   .
             And God stands winding His lonely horn,
             And time and the world are ever in flight;
             And love is less kind than the grey twilight,
             And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.
   .     . The Lover mourns for the Loss of Love    .
             Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,
             I had a beautiful friend
             And I dreamed that the old despair
             Would end in love in the end:
             She looked in my heart one day
             And saw your image was there;
             She has gone weeping away.
   .     . The Blessed    .
             Cumhal called out, bending his head,
             Till Dathi came and stood,
             With a blink in his eyes, at the cave-mouth,
             Between the wind and the wood.
   .
             And Cumhal said, bending his knees,
             'I have come by the windy way
             To gather the half of your blessedness
             And learn to pray when you pray.
   .
             'I can bring you salmon out of the streams
             And heron out of the skies.'
             But Dathi folded his hands and smiled
             With the secrets of God in his eyes.
   .
             And Cumhal saw like drifting smoke
             All manner of blessed souls,
             Women and children, young men with books,
             And old men with croziers and stoles.
   .
             'Praise God and God's Mother,' Dathi said,
             'For God and God's Mother have sent
             The blessedest souls that walk in the world
             To fill your heart with content.'
   .
             'And which is the blessedest,' Cumhal said,
             'Where all are comely and good?
             Is it these that with golden thuribles
             Are singing about the wood?'
   .
             'My eyes are blinking,' Dathi said,
             'With the secrets of God half blind,
             But I can see where the wind goes
             And follow the way of the wind;
   .
             'And blessedness goes where the wind goes,
             And when it is gone we are dead;
             I see the blessedest soul in the world
             And he nods a drunken head.
   .
             'O blessedness comes in the night and the day
             And whither the wise heart knows;
             And one has seen in the redness of wine
             The Incorruptible Rose,
   .
             'That drowsily drops faint leaves on him
             And the sweetness of desire,
             While time and the world are ebbing away
             In twilights of dew and fire.'
   .     . The Secret Rose    .
             Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
             Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
             Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulcher,
             Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
             And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
             Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
             Men have named beauty.  Thy great leaves enfold
             The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
             Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
             Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise
             In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;
             Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
             Who met Fand walking among the flaming dew
             By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
             And lost the world for Emer and a kiss;
             And him who drove the gods out of their liss,
             And till a hundred morns had flowered red
             Feasted, and wept in the barrows of his dead;
             And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
             And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
             Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;
             And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,
             And sought through lands and islands numberless years,
             Until he found, with laughter and with tears,
             A woman of so shining loveliness
             That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
             A little stolen tress. I, too, await
             The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
             When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
             Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
             Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
             Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?
   .     . 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.
   .     . 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.
   .     . No Second Troy    .
             Why should I blame her that she filled my days
             With misery, or that she would of late
             Have taught ignorant men most violent ways,
             Or hurled little streets upon the great,
             Had they but courage equal to desire?
             What could have made her peaceful with a mind
             That nobleness made simple as fire,
             With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
             That is not natural in any age like this,
             Being high and solitary and most stern?
             Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
             Was there another Troy for her to burn?
   .     . 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 to 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 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.
   .     . 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 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 marvelous moon.
   .     . 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.
   .     . A Deep-sworn Vow    .
             Others because you did not keep
             That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine,
             Yet always when I look death in the face,
             When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
             Or when I grow excited with wine,
             Suddenly I meet your face.
   .     . Sixteen Dead Men    .
             O but we talked at large before
             The sixteen men were shot,
             But who can talk of give and take,
             What should be and what should not
             While those dead men are loitering there
             To stir the boiling pot?
   .
             You say that we should still the land
             Till Germany's overcome;
             But who is there to argue that
             Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
             And is their logic to outweigh
             MacDonagh's bony thumb?
   .
             How could you dream they'd listen
             That have an ear alone
             For those new comrades they have found,
             Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,
             Or meddle with our give and take
             That converse bone to bone?
   .     . The Rose Tree    .
             'O words are lightly spoken,'
             Said Pearse to Connolly,
             'Maybe a breath of politic words
             Has withered our Rose Tree;
             Or maybe but a wind that blows
             Across the bitter sea.'
   .
             'It needs but to be watered,'
             James Connolly replied,
             'To make the green come out again
             And spread on every side,
             And shake the blossom from the bud
             To be the garden's pride.'
   .
             'But where can we draw water,'
             Said Pearse to Connolly,
             'When all the wells are parched away?
             O plain as plain can be
             There's nothing but our own red blood
             Can make a right Rose Tree.'
   .     . The Second Coming    .
             Turning and turning in the widening gyre
             The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
             Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
             Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
             The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
             The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
             The best lack all conviction, while the worst
             Are full of passionate intensity.
   .
             Surely some revelation is at hand;
             Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
             The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
             When a vast image of Spiritus Mundi
             Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
             A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
             A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
             Is moving it's slow thighs, while all about it
             Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
             The darkness drops again; but now I know
             That twenty centuries of stony sleep
             Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
             And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
             Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
   .     . 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.
   .     . 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 countyside
             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.
   .