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

The door stands always open to receive,
With kindly welcome, starved and sickly folk,
Or any who would fly the woful times.
Merchants, you bring me news?

We saw a man
Heavy with sickness in the Bog of Allan,
Whom you had bid buy cattle. Near Fair Head
We saw your grain ships lying all becalmed
In the dark night, and not less still than they
Burned all their mirrored lanthorns in the sea.

My thanks to God, to Mary, and the angels,
I still have bags of money, and can buy
Meal from the merchants who have stored it up,
To prosper on the hunger of the poor.
You have been far, and know the signs of things:
When will this yellow vapour no more hang
And creep about the fields, and this great heat
Vanish away – and grass show its green shoots?

There is no sign of change – day copies day,
Green things are dead – the cattle too are dead,
Or dying – and on all the vapour hangs
And fattens with disease and glows with heat.
In you is all the hope of all the land.

And heard you of the demons who buy souls?

There are some men who hold they have wolves’ heads,
And say their limbs, dried by the infinite flame,
Have all the speed of storms; others again
Say they are gross and little; while a few
Will have it they seem much as mortals are,
But tall and brown and travelled, like us, lady.
Yet all agree a power is in their looks
That makes men bow, and flings a casting-net
About their souls, and that all men would go
And barter those poor flames – their spirits – only
You bribe them with the safety of your gold.

Praise be to God, to Mary, and the angels,
That I am wealthy. Wherefore do they sell?

The demons give a hundred crowns and more
For a poor soul like his who lies asleep
By your great door under the porter’s niche;
A little soul not worth a hundred pence.
But, for a soul like yours, I heard them say,
They would give five hundred thousand crowns and more.

How can a heap of crowns pay for a soul?
Is the green grave so terrible a thing?

Some sell because the money gleams, and some
Because they are in terror of the grave,
And some because their neighbours sold before,
And some because there is a kind of joy
In casting hope away, in losing joy,
In ceasing all resistance, in at last
Opening one’s arms to the eternal flames,
In casting all sails out upon the wind:
To this – full of the gaiety of the lost —
Would all folk hurry if your gold were gone.

There is a something, merchant, in your voice
That makes me fear. When you were telling how
A man may lose his soul and lose his God,
Your eyes lighted, and the strange weariness
That hangs about you vanished. When you told
How my poor money serves the people – both —
Merchants, forgive me – seemed to smile.

Man’s sins
Move us to laughter only, we have seen
So many lands and seen so many men.
How strange that all these people should be swung
As on a lady’s shoe-string – under them
The glowing leagues of never-ending flame!

There is a something in you that I fear:
A something not of us. Were you not born
In some most distant corner of the world?

Away now – they are in the passage – hurry,
For they will know us, and freeze up our hearts
With Ave Marys, and burn all our skin
With holy water.

Farewell: we must ride
Many a mile before the morning come;
Our horses beat the ground impatiently.

What would you?

As we nodded by the fire,
Telling old histories, we heard a noise
Of falling money. We have searched in vain.

You are too timid. I heard naught at all.

Ay, we are timid, for a rich man’s word
Can shake our houses, and a moon of drouth
Shrivel our seedlings in the barren earth;
We are the slaves of wind, and hail, and flood;
Fear jogs our elbow in the market-place,
And nods beside us on the chimney-seat.
Ill-bodings are as native unto our hearts
As are their spots unto the woodpeckers.

You need not shake with bodings in this house.

The treasure-room is broken in – mavrone – mavrone;
The door stands open and the gold is gone.

CATHLEEN.
Be silent. [ The cry ceases.
Saw you any one?

Mavrone,
That my good mistress should lose all this money.

You three upon my right hand, ride and ride;
I will give a farm to him who finds the thieves.

The porter trembles.

It is all no use;
Demons were here. I sat beside the door
In my stone niche, and two owls passed me by,
Whispering with human voices.

God forsakes us.

Old man, old man, He never closed a door
Unless one opened. I am desolate,
For a most sad resolve wakes in my heart:
But always I have faith. Old men and women,
Be silent; He does not forsake the world,
But stands before it modelling in the clay
And moulding there His image. Age by age
The clay wars with His fingers and pleads hard
For its old, heavy, dull, and shapeless ease;
At times it crumbles and a nation falls,
Now moves awry and demon hordes are born.

But leave me now, for I am desolate,
I hear a whisper from beyond the thunder.

Yet stay an instant. When we meet again
I may have grown forgetful. Oona, take
These two – the larder and the dairy keys.
[ To THE OLD PEASANT.] But take you this. It opens the small room
Of herbs for medicine, of hellebore,
Of vervain, monkshood, plantain, and self-heal
And all the others; and the book of cures
Is on the upper shelf. You understand,
Because you doctored goats and cattle once.