William Yeats: Poems

And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one.

Till the horse gave a whinny; for, cumbrous with stems of the hazel and oak,

A valley flowed down from his hoofs, and there in the long grass lay,

Under the starlight and shadow, a monstrous slumbering folk,

Their naked and gleaming bodies poured out and heaped in the way.

And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and blade;

And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years old

Could sleep on a couch of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid,

And more comely than man can make them with bronze and silver and gold.

And each of the huge white creatures was huger than fourscore men;

The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands were the claws of birds,

And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of the mural glen,

The breathing came from those bodies, long-warless, grown whiter than curds.

The wood was so spacious above them, that He who had stars for His flocks

Could fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His dew-cumbered skies;

So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nests in their locks,

Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes.

And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and came,

Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow place wide;

And the chief of the huge white creatures, his knees in the soft star-flame,

Lay loose in a place of shadow: we drew the reins by his side.

Golden the nails of his bird-claws, flung loosely along the dim ground;

In one was a branch soft-shining, with bells more many than sighs,

In midst of an old man's bosom; owls ruffling and pacing around,

Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes.

And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers; no, not since the world began,

In realms where the handsome were many, nor in glamours by demons flung,

Have faces alive with such beauty been known to the salt eye of man,

Yet weary with passions that faded when the seven-fold seas were young.

And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep's forebear, far sung by the Sennachies.

I saw how those slumberers, grown weary, there camping in grasses deep,

Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the wandering seas,

Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of unhuman sleep.

Snatching the horn of Niam, I blew a lingering note;

Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like the stirring of flies.

He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of his throat,

Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes.

I cried, "Come out of the shadow, king of the nails of gold!

"And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of your hands,

"That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old;

"Your questioner, Usheen, is worthy, he comes from the Fenian lands."

Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the smoke of their dreams;

His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came;

Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow dropping a sound in faint streams

Softer than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame.

Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth,

The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered stone

Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth,

And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.

In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low;

And the pearl-pale Niam lay by me, her brow on the midst of my breast;

And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years 'gan flow;

Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our rest.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot;

How the fetlocks drip blood in the battle, when the fallen on fallen lie rolled;

How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron's plot,

And the names of the demons whose hammers made armour for Conhor of old.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot;

That the spear-shaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of ozier and hide;

How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spearhead's burning spot;

How the slow, blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide.

But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their throngs,

Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales;

Came by me the kings of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter and songs,

Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the tempest with sails.

Came Blanid, Mac Nessa, tall Fergus who feastward of old time slunk,

Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittle on his beard never dry,

Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car borne, his mighty head sunk

Helpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and death-making eye.

And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams,

And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone,

So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not, with creatures of dreams,

In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone.

At times our slumber was lightened. When the sun was on silver or gold;

When brushed with the wings of the owls, in the dimness they love going by;

When a glow-worm was green on a grass leaf, lured from his lair in the mould;

Half wakening, we lifted our eyelids, and gazed on the grass with a sigh.

So watched I when, man of the croziers, at the heel of a century fell,

Weak, in the midst of the meadow, from his miles in the midst of the air,

A starling like them that forgathered 'neath a moon waking white as a shell.

When the Fenians made foray at morning with Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair.

I awoke: the strange horse without summons out of the distance ran,

Thrusting his nose to my shoulder; he knew in his bosom deep

That once more moved in my bosom the ancient sadness of man,

And that I would leave the immortals, their dimness, their dews dropping sleep.

O, had you seen beautiful Niam grow white as the waters are white,

Lord of the croziers, you even had lifted your hands and wept:

But, the bird in my fingers, I mounted, remembering alone that delight

Of twilight and slumber were gone, and that hoofs impatiently stept.

I cried, "O Niam! O white one! if only a twelve-houred day,

"I must gaze on the beard of Finn, and move where the old men and young

"In the Fenians' dwellings of wattle lean on the chessboards and play,

"Ah, sweet to me now were even bald Conan's slanderous tongue!

"Like me were some galley forsaken far off in Meridian isle.

"Remembering its long-oared companions, sails turning to thread-bare rags;

"No more to crawl on the seas with long oars mile after mile,

"But to be amid shooting of flies and flowering of rushes and flags."

Their motionless eyeballs of spirits grown mild with mysterious thought

Watched her those seamless faces from the valley's glimmering girth;

As she murmured, "O wandering Usheen, the strength of the bell-branch is naught,

"For there moves alive in your fingers the fluttering sadness of earth.

"Then go through the lands in the saddle and see what the mortals do,

"And softly come to your Niam over the tops of the tide;

"But weep for your Niam, O Usheen, weep; for if only your shoe

"Brush lightly as haymouse earth's pebbles, you will come no more to my side.

"O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?"