William Yeats - Poems

I gaze upon them as the swallow gazes

Upon the nest under the eave, before

She wander the loud waters. Do not weep

Too great a while, for there is many a candle

On the High Altar though one fall. Aleel,

Who sang about the dancers of the woods,

That know not the hard burden of the world,

Having but breath in their kind bodies, farewell!

And farewell, Oona, you who played with me

And bore me in your arms about the house

When I was but a child—and therefore happy,

Therefore happy even like those that dance.

The storm is in my hair and I must go.

( She dies. )

OONA

Bring me the looking-glass.

(A woman brings it to her out of inner room . OONA holds glass over the lips of CATHLEEN. All is silent for a moment, then she speaks in a half-scream. )

O, she is dead!

A PEASANT

She was the great white lily of the world.

A PEASANT

She was more beautiful than the pale stars.

AN OLD PEASANT WOMAN

The little plant I loved is broken in two.

(ALEEL takes looking-glass from OONA and flings it upon floor, so that it is broken in many pieces .)

ALEEL

I shatter you in fragments, for the face

That brimmed you up with beauty is no more;

And die, dull heart, for you that were a mirror

Are but a ball of passionate dust again!

And level earth and plumy sea, rise up!

And haughty sky, fall down!

A PEASANT WOMAN

Pull him upon his knees,

His curses will pluck lightning on our heads.

ALEEL

Angels and devils clash in the middle air,

And brazen swords clang upon brazen helms.

Look, look, a spear has gone through Belial's eye!

( A winged ANGEL, carrying a torch and a sword, enters from the R. with eyes fixed upon some distant thing. The ANGEL is about to pass out to the L. when ALEEL speaks. The ANGEL stops a moment and turns .)

Look no more on the half-closed gates of Hell,

But speak to me whose mind is smitten of God,

That it may be no more with mortal things:

And tell of her who lies there.

( The ANGEL turns again and is about to go, but is seized by ALEEL.)

Till you speak

You shall not drift into eternity.

THE ANGEL

The light beats down; the gates of pearl are wide.

And she is passing to the floor of peace,

And Mary of the seven times wounded heart

Has kissed her lips, and the long blessed hair

Has fallen on her face; the Light of Lights

Looks always on the motive, not the deed,

The Shadow of Shadows on the deed alone.

(ALEEL releases the ANGEL and kneels .)

OONA

Tell them to walk upon the floor of peace,

That I would die and go to her I love;

The years like great black oxen tread the world,

And God the herdsman goads them on behind,

And I am broken by their passing feet.

Down by the Salley Gardens. —An extension of three lines sung to me by an old woman at Ballisodare.

Findrinny (Findruine). —A kind of white bronze.

Finvarra (Finbar). —The king of the faeries of Connaught.

Hell. —In the older Irish books Hell is always cold, and it may be because the Fomoroh, or evil powers, ruled over the north and the winter. Christianity adopted as far as possible the Pagan symbolism in Ireland as elsewhere, and Irish poets, when they spoke of "the cold flagstone of Hell," may have repeated Pagan symbolism. The folk-tales, and Keating in his description of Hell, make use, however, of the ordinary symbolism of fire.

The Lamentation of the Pensioner. —This poem is little more than a translation into verse of the very words of an old Wicklow peasant. Fret means doom or destiny.

The Land of Heart's Desire. —This little play was produced at the Avenue Theatre in the spring of 1894, with the following cast:—Maurteen Bruin, Mr. James Welch; Shawn Bruin, Mr. A.E.W. Mason; Father Hart, Mr. G.R. Foss; Bridget Bruin, Miss Charlotte Morland; Maire Bruin, Miss Winifred Fraser; A Faery Child, Miss Dorothy Paget. It ran for a little over six weeks. It was revived in America in 1901, when it was taken on tour by Mrs. Lemoyne. It has been played two or three times professionally since then in America and a great many times in England and America by amateurs. Till lately it was not part of the repertory of the Abbey Theatre, for I had grown to dislike it without knowing what I disliked in it. This winter, however, I have made many revisions and now it plays well enough to give me pleasure. It is printed in this book in the new form, which was acted for the first time on February 22, 1912, at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. At the Abbey Theatre, where the platform of the stage comes out in front of the curtain, the curtain falls before the priest's last words. He remains outside the curtain and the words are spoken to the audience like an epilogue.

The Meditation of the Old Fisherman. —This poem is founded upon some things a fisherman said to me when out fishing in Sligo Bay.

Northern Cold. —The Fomor, the powers of death and darkness and cold and evil, came from the north.

Nuala. —The wife of Finvarra.

Rose. —The rose is a favourite symbol with the Irish poets, and has given a name to several poems both Gaelic and English, and is used in love poems, in addresses to Ireland like Mr. Aubrey de Vere's poem telling how "The little black rose shall be red at last," and in religious poems, like the old Gaelic one which speaks of "the Rose of Friday," meaning the Rose of Austerity.

Salley. —Willow.

Seven Hazel-trees. —There was once a well overshadowed by seven sacred hazel-trees, in the midst of Ireland. A certain woman plucked their fruit, and seven rivers arose out of the well and swept her away. In my poems this well is the source of all the waters of this world, which are therefore seven-fold.

The Wanderings of Usheen. —The poem is founded upon the middle Irish dialogues of S. Patric and Usheen and a certain Gaelic poem of the last century. The events it describes, like the events in most of the poems in this volume, are supposed to have taken place rather in the indefinite period, made up of many periods, described by the folk-tales, than in any particular century; it therefore, like the later Fenian stories themselves, mixes much that is mediæval with much that is ancient. The Gaelic poems do not make Usheen go to more than one island, but a story in Silva Gadelica describes "four paradises," an island to the north, an island to the west, an island to the south, and Adam's paradise in the east.

Printed in Great Britain by

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED

WOKING AND LONDON

Transcriber's Notes:

Page 16: 'thictkes' changed to 'thickets'

Page 172: 'He brings in' could be 'She brings in'

Page 263: 'Before this duy' changed to 'Before this day'

Page 290: 'Far from the hazel and oak.' changed to 'Far from the hazel and oak,'

Page 295: 'move far off' could be 'move far oft'

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