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

I will not be put from you, although I think
I had not grudged it you if some great lady,
If the King’s daughter, had set out your bed.
I will not give you up to death; no, no!
And are not these white arms and this soft neck
Better than the brown earth?

Begone from me!
There’s treachery in those arms and in that voice.
They’re all against me. Why do you linger there?
How long must I endure the sight of you?

O, Seanchan! Seanchan!

Go where you will,
So it be out of sight and out of mind.
I cast you from me like an old torn cap,
A broken shoe, a glove without a finger,
A crooked penny; whatever is most worthless.

O, do not drive me from you!

What did I say,
My dove of the woods? I was about to curse you.
It was a frenzy. I’ll unsay it all.
But you must go away.

Let me be near you.
I will obey like any married wife.
Let me but lie before your feet.

Come nearer.

If I had eaten when you bid me, sweetheart,
The kiss of multitudes in times to come
Had been the poorer.

Has he eaten yet?

No, King, and will not till you have restored
The right of the poets.

Seanchan, you have refused
Everybody that I have sent, and now
I come to you myself; and I have come
To bid you put your pride as far away
As I have put my pride. I had your love
Not a great while ago, and now you have planned
To put a voice by every cottage fire,
And in the night when no one sees who cries,
To cry against me till my throne has crumbled.
And yet if I give way I must offend
My courtiers and nobles till they, too,
Strike at the crown. What would you have of me?

When did the poets promise safety, King?

Seanchan, I bring you bread in my own hands,
And bid you eat because of all these reasons,
And for this further reason, that I love you.

You have refused it, Seanchan?

We have refused it.

I have been patient, though I am a king,
And have the means to force you. But that’s ended,
And I am but a king, and you a subject.
Nobles and courtiers, bring the poets hither;

For you can have your way. I that was man,
With a man’s heart, am now all king again,
Remembering that the seed I come of, though
A hundred kings have sown it and resown it,
Has neither trembled nor shrunk backward yet
Because of the hard business of a king.
Speak to your master; beg your life of him;
Show him the halter that is round your necks.
If his heart’s set upon it, he may die;
But you shall all die with him. [ Goes up steps.
Beg your lives!
Begin, for you have little time to lose.
Begin it, you that are the oldest pupil.

Die, Seanchan, and proclaim the right of the poets.

Silence! you are as crazy as your master.
But that young boy, that seems the youngest of you,
I’d have him speak. Kneel down before him, boy;
Hold up your hands to him, that you may pluck
That milky-coloured neck out of the noose.

Die, Seanchan, and proclaim the right of the poets.

Gather the halters up into your hands
And drive us where you will, for in all things,
But in our Art, we are obedient.

Kneel down, kneel down; he has the greater power.
There is no power but has its root in his —
I understand it now. There is no power
But his that can withhold the crown or give it,
Or make it reverend in the eyes of men,
And therefore I have laid it in his hands,
And I will do his will.

O crown! O crown!
It is but right the hands that made the crown
In the old time should give it where they please.

O silver trumpets! Be you lifted up,
And cry to the great race that is to come.
Long-throated swans, amid the waves of Time,
Sing loudly, for beyond the wall of the world
It waits, and it may hear and come to us.