William Yeats - The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 3 of 8. The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the Stars

Let Him that made mankind, the angels and devils
And death and plenty mend what He has made,
For when we labour in vain and eye still sees
Heart breaks in vain.

How would that quiet end?

How but in healing?

You have seen my tears.
And I can see your hand shake on the floor.

I thought but of healing. He was angelical.

No, not angelical, but of the old gods,
Who wander about the world to waken the heart —
The passionate, proud heart that all the angels
Leaving nine heavens empty would rock to sleep.

Do not hold out to me beseeching hands.
This heart shall never waken on earth. I have sworn
By her whose heart the seven sorrows have pierced
To pray before this altar until my heart
Has grown to Heaven like a tree, and there
Rustled its leaves till Heaven has saved my people.

When one so great has spoken of love to one
So little as I, although to deny him love,
What can he but hold out beseeching hands,
Then let them fall beside him, knowing how greatly
They have overdared?

If the old tales are true,
Queens have wed shepherds and kings beggar-maids;
God’s procreant waters flowing about your mind
Have made you more than kings or queens; and not you
But I am the empty pitcher.

Being silent,
I have said all – farewell, farewell; and yet no,
Give me your hand to kiss.

I kiss your brow,
But will not say farewell. I am often weary,
And I would hear the harp-string.

I cannot stay,
For I would hide my sorrow among the hills —
Listen, listen, the hills are calling me.

I hear the cry of curlew.

Then I will out
Where I can hear wind cry and water cry
And curlew cry: how does the saying go
That calls them the three oldest cries in the world?
Farewell, farewell, I will go wander among them,
Because there is no comfort under a roof-tree.

I cannot see him. He has come to the great door.
I must go pray. Would that my heart and mind
Were as little shaken as this candle-light.

Who was the man that came from the great door
While we were still in the shadow?

Aleel, her lover.

It may be that he has turned her thought from us
And we can gather our merchandise in peace.

No, no, for she is kneeling.

Shut the door.
Are all our drudges here?

I bid them follow.
Can you not hear them breathing upon the stairs?
I have sat this hour under the elder-tree.

I had bid you rob her treasury, and yet
I found you sitting drowsed and motionless,
Your chin bowed to your knees, while on all sides,
Bat-like from bough and roof and window-ledge,
Clung evil souls of men, and in the woods,
Like streaming flames, floated upon the winds
The elemental creatures.

I have fared ill;
She prayed so hard I could not cross the threshold
Till this young man had turned her prayer to dreams.
You have had a man to kill: how have you fared?

I lay in the image of a nine-monthed bonyeen,
By Tubber-vanach cross-roads: Father John
Came, sad and moody, murmuring many prayers;
I seemed as though I came from his own sty;
He saw the one brown ear; the breviary dropped;
He ran; I ran, I ran into the quarry;
He fell a score of yards.

Now that he is dead
We shall be too much thronged with souls to-morrow.
Did his soul escape you?

I thrust it in the bag.
But the hand that blessed the poor and raised the Host
Tore through the leather with sharp piety.

Well, well, to labour – here is the treasury door.

Brave thought, brave thought – a shining thought of mine!
She now no more may bribe the poor – no more
Cheat our great master of his merchandise,
While our heels dangle at the house in the woods,
And grass grows on the threshold, and snails crawl
Along the window-pane and the mud floor.
Brother, where wander all these dwarfish folk,
Hostile to men, the people of the tides?

They are gone. They have already wandered away,
Unwilling labourers.

I will call them hither.

Come hither, hither, hither, water-folk:
Come, all you elemental populace;
Leave lonely the long-hoarding surges: leave
The cymbals of the waves to clash alone,
And, shaking the sea-tangles from your hair,
Gather about us. [ After a pause.
I can hear a sound
As from waves beating upon distant strands;
And the sea-creatures, like a surf of light,
Pour eddying through the pathways of the oaks;
And as they come, the sentient grass and leaves
Bow towards them, and the tall, drouth-jaded oaks
Fondle the murmur of their flying feet.

The green things love unknotted hearts and minds;
And neither one with angels or with us,
Nor risen in arms with evil nor with good,
In laughter roves the litter of the waves.

We come unwillingly, for she whose gold
We must now carry to the house in the woods
Is dear to all our race. On the green plain,
Beside the sea, a hundred shepherds live
To mind her sheep; and when the nightfall comes
They leave a hundred pans of white ewes’ milk
Outside their doors, to feed us when the dawn
Has driven us out of Finbar’s ancient house,
And broken the long dance under the hill.