William Yeats - The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 2 of 8

He might, if he’d a mind to it,
Be digging out our tongues,
Or dragging out our hair,
Or bleaching us like calves,
Or weaning us like lambs,
But for the kindness and the softness that is in him.

I’ll curse him till I drop!

The curse of the poor be upon him,
The curse of the widows upon him,
The curse of the children upon him,
The curse of the bishops upon him,
Until he be as rotten as an old mushroom!

The curse of wrinkles be upon him!
Wrinkles where his eyes are,
Wrinkles where his nose is,
Wrinkles where his mouth is,
And a little old devil looking out of every wrinkle!

And nobody will sing for him,
And nobody will hunt for him,
And nobody will fish for him,
And nobody will pray for him,
But ever and always curse him and abuse him.

What good is in a poet?
Has he money in a stocking,
Or cider in the cellar,
Or flitches in the chimney,
Or anything anywhere but his own idleness?

Help! help! Am I not in authority?

That’s how I’ll shout for the King!

Help! help! Am I not in the King’s place?

I’ll teach him to be kind to the poor!

Help! help! Wait till we are in Kinvara!

I’ll shake the royalty out of his legs!

I’ll scrumble the ermine out of his skin!

How dare you make this uproar at the doors,
Deafening the very greatest in the land,
As if the farmyards and the rookeries
Had all been emptied!

It is the Chamberlain.

Pick up the litter there, and get you gone!
Be quick about it! Have you no respect
For this worn stair, this all but sacred door,
Where suppliants and tributary kings
Have passed, and the world’s glory knelt in silence?
Have you no reverence for what all other men
Hold honourable?

If I might speak my mind,
I’d say the King would have his luck again
If he would let my master have his rights.

Pick up your litter! Take your noise away!
Make haste, and get the clapper from the bell!

What do the great and powerful care for rights
That have no armies!

My lord, I am not to blame.
I’m the King’s man, and they attacked me for it.

We have our prayers, our curses and our prayers,
And we can give a great name or a bad one.

We could not make the poet eat, my lord.

Much honoured [ is shoved again ] – honoured to speak with you, my lord;
But I’ll go find the girl that he’s to marry.
She’s coming, but I’ll hurry her, my lord.
Between ourselves, my lord [ is shoved again ], she is a great coaxer.
Much honoured, my lord. O, she’s the girl to do it;
For when the intellect is out, my lord,
Nobody but a woman’s any good.

Much honoured, my lord [ is shoved again ], much honoured, much honoured!

Well, you must be contented, for your work
Has roused the common sort against the King,
And stolen his authority. The State
Is like some orderly and reverend house,
Wherein the master, being dead of a sudden,
The servants quarrel where they have a mind to,
And pilfer here and there.

How many days
Will you keep up this quarrel with the King,
And the King’s nobles, and myself, and all,
Who’d gladly be your friends, if you would let them?

If you would try, you might persuade him, father.
I cannot make him answer me, and yet
If fitting hands would offer him the food,
He might accept it.

Certainly I will not.
I’ve made too many homilies, wherein
The wanton imagination of the poets
Has been condemned, to be his flatterer.
If pride and disobedience are unpunished
Who will obey?

If you would speak to him,
You might not find persuasion difficult,
With all the devils of hunger helping you.

I will not interfere, and if he starve
For being obstinate and stiff in the neck,
’Tis but good riddance.

One of us must do it.
It might be, if you’d reason with him, ladies,
He would eat something, for I have a notion
That if he brought misfortune on the King,
Or the King’s house, we’d be as little thought of
As summer linen when the winter’s come.