William Yeats - Poems

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."

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