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

You are all thumbs.

Hear how the dog bays, mother,
And how the gray hen flutters in the coop.
Strange things are going up and down the land,
These famine times: by Tubber-vanach crossroads
A woman met a man with ears spread out,
And they moved up and down like wings of bats.

Shemus stays late.

By Carrick-orus churchyard,
A herdsman met a man who had no mouth,
Nor ears, nor eyes: his face a wall of flesh;
He saw him plainly by the moon.

White Mary,
Bring Shemus home out of the wicked woods;
Save Shemus from the wolves; Shemus is daring;
And save him from the demons of the woods,
Who have crept out and wander on the roads,
Deluding dim-eyed souls now newly dead,
And those alive who have gone crazed with famine.
Save him, White Mary Virgin.

And but now
I thought I heard far-off tympans and harps.

Shemus has come.

May he bring better food
Than the lean crow he brought us yesterday.

Shemus, you are late home: you have been lounging
And chattering with some one: you know well
How the dreams trouble me, and how I pray,
Yet you lie sweating on the hill from morn,
Or linger at the crossways with all comers,
Telling or gathering up calamity.

You would rail my head off. Here is a good dinner.

A wolf is better than a carrion crow.
I searched all day: the mice and rats and hedgehogs
Seemed to be dead, and I could hardly hear
A wing moving in all the famished woods,
Though the dead leaves and clauber of four forests
Cling to my footsole. I turned home but now,
And saw, sniffing the floor in a bare cow-house,
This young wolf here: the crossbow brought him down.

Praise be the saints![ After a pause.
Why did the house dog bay?

He heard me coming and smelt food – what else?

We will not starve awhile.

What food is within?

There is a bag half full of meal, a pan
Half full of milk.

And we have one old hen.

The bogwood were less hard.

Before you came
She made a great noise in the hencoop, Shemus.
What fluttered in the window?

Two horned owls
Have blinked and fluttered on the window sill
From when the dog began to bay.

Hush, hush.

They are off again: ladies or gentlemen
Travel in the woods with tympan and with harp.
Teig, put the wolf upon the biggest hook
And shut the door.

Sit on the creepy stool
And call up a whey face and a crying voice,
And let your head be bowed upon your knees.

Come in, your honours: a full score of evenings
This threshold worn away by many a foot
Has been passed only by the snails and birds
And by our own poor hunger-shaken feet.

Are you so hungry?

Lady, I fell but now,
And lay upon the threshold like a log.
I have not tasted a crust for these four days.

Had I more money I would give it you,
But we have passed by many cabins to-day;
And if you come to-morrow to my house
You shall have twice the sum. I am the owner
Of a long empty castle in these woods.

Then you are Countess Cathleen: you and yours
Are ever welcome under my poor thatch.
Will you sit down and warm you by the sods?

We must find out this castle in the wood
Before the chill o’ the night.

Do not blame me,
Good woman, for the tympan and the harp:
I was bid fly the terror of the times
And wrap me round with music and sweet song
Or else pine to my grave. I have lost my way;
Aleel, the poet, who should know these woods,
Because we met him on their border but now
Wandering and singing like the foam of the sea,
Is so wrapped up in dreams of terrors to come
That he can give no help.

You’re almost there.
There is a trodden way among the hazels
That brings your servants to their marketing.