Back Aa

Wild Swans at Coole, The

<h2>HIS PHOENIX</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> There is a queen in China, or maybe it's in Spain, And birthdays and holidays such praises can be heard Of her unblemished lineaments, a whiteness with no stain, That she might be that sprightly girl who was trodden by a bird; And there's a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind, Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind: I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day. </div> <div class="stanza"> The young men every night applaud their Gaby's laughing eye, And Ruth St. Denis had more charm although she had poor luck, From nineteen hundred nine or ten, Pavlova's had the cry, And there's a player in the States who gathers up her cloak And flings herself out of the room when Juliet would be bride With all a woman's passion, a child's imperious way, And there are—but no matter if there are scores beside: I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day. </div> <div class="stanza"> There's Margaret and Marjorie and Dorothy and Nan, A Daphne and a Mary who live in privacy; One's had her fill of lovers, another's had but one, Another boasts, 'I pick and choose and have but two or three.' If head and limb have beauty and the instep's high and light, They can spread out what sail they please for all I have to say, Be but the breakers of men's hearts or engines of delight: I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day. </div> <div class="stanza"> There'll be that crowd to make men wild through all the centuries, And maybe there'll be some young belle walk out to make men wild Who is my beauty's equal, though that my heart denies, But not the exact likeness, the simplicity of a child, And that proud look as though she had gazed into the burning sun, And all the shapely body no tittle gone astray, I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet God's will be done, I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>A THOUGHT FROM PROPERTIUS</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> She might, so noble from head To great shapely knees, The long flowing line, Have walked to the altar Through the holy images At Pallas Athene's side, Or been fit spoil for a centaur Drunk with the unmixed wine. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>BROKEN DREAMS</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> There is grey in your hair. Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath When you are passing; But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing Because it was your prayer Recovered him upon the bed of death. For your sole sake—that all heart's ache have known, And given to others all heart's ache, From meagre girlhood's putting on Burdensome beauty—for your sole sake Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom, So great her portion in that peace you make By merely walking in a room. </div> <div class="stanza"> Your beauty can but leave among us Vague memories, nothing but memories. A young man when the old men are done talking Will say to an old man, 'Tell me of that lady The poet stubborn with his passion sang us When age might well have chilled his blood.' </div> <div class="stanza"> Vague memories, nothing but memories, But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed. The certainty that I shall see that lady Leaning or standing or walking In the first loveliness of womanhood, And with the fervour of my youthful eyes, Has set me muttering like a fool. </div> <div class="stanza"> You are more beautiful than any one And yet your body had a flaw: Your small hands were not beautiful, And I am afraid that you will run And paddle to the wrist In that mysterious, always brimming lake Where those that have obeyed the holy law Paddle and are perfect; leave unchanged The hands that I have kissed For old sakes' sake. </div> <div class="stanza"> The last stroke of midnight dies. All day in the one chair From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged In rambling talk with an image of air: Vague memories, nothing but memories. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>A DEEP-SWORN VOW</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Others because you did not keep That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine; Yet always when I look death in the face, When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, Suddenly I meet your face. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>PRESENCES</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> This night has been so strange that it seemed As if the hair stood up on my head. From going-down of the sun I have dreamed That women laughing, or timid or wild, In rustle of lace or silken stuff, Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing Returned and yet unrequited love. They stood in the door and stood between My great wood lecturn and the fire Till I could hear their hearts beating: One is a harlot, and one a child That never looked upon man with desire, And one it may be a queen. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>THE BALLOON OF THE MIND</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Hands, do what you're bid; Bring the balloon of the mind That bellies and drags in the wind Into its narrow shed. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>TO A SQUIRREL AT KYLE-NA-GNO</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Come play with me; Why should you run Through the shaking tree As though I'd a gun To strike you dead? When all I would do Is to scratch your head And let you go. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>ON BEING ASKED FOR A WAR POEM</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> I think it better that in times like these A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth We have no gift to set a statesman right; He has had enough of meddling who can please A young girl in the indolence of her youth, Or an old man upon a winter's night. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>IN MEMORY OF ALFRED POLLEXFEN</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Five-and-twenty years have gone Since old William Pollexfen Laid his strong bones down in death By his wife Elizabeth In the grey stone tomb he made. And after twenty years they laid In that tomb by him and her, His son George, the astrologer; And Masons drove from miles away To scatter the Acacia spray Upon a melancholy man Who had ended where his breath began. Many a son and daughter lies Far from the customary skies, The Mall and Eades's grammar school, In London or in Liverpool; But where is laid the sailor John? That so many lands had known: Quiet lands or unquiet seas Where the Indians trade or Japanese. He never found his rest ashore, Moping for one voyage more. Where have they laid the sailor John? </div> <div class="stanza"> And yesterday the youngest son, A humorous, unambitious man, Was buried near the astrologer; And are we now in the tenth year? Since he, who had been contented long, A nobody in a great throng, Decided he would journey home, Now that his fiftieth year had come, And 'Mr. Alfred' be again Upon the lips of common men Who carried in their memory His childhood and his family. At all these death-beds women heard A visionary white sea-bird Lamenting that a man should die; And with that cry I have raised my cry. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>UPON A DYING LADY</h2> <h3>I</h3> <h3>HER COURTESY</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair Propped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face. She would not have us sad because she is lying there, And when she meets our gaze her eyes are laughter-lit, Her speech a wicked tale that we may vie with her Matching our broken-hearted wit against her wit, Thinking of saints and of Petronius Arbiter. </div> </div> <h3>II</h3> <h3>CERTAIN ARTISTS BRING HER DOLLS AND DRAWINGS</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Bring where our Beauty lies A new modelled doll, or drawing, With a friend's or an enemy's Features, or maybe showing Her features when a tress Of dull red hair was flowing Over some silken dress Cut in the Turkish fashion, Or it may be like a boy's. We have given the world our passion We have naught for death but toys. </div> </div> <h3>III</h3> <h3>SHE TURNS THE DOLLS' FACES TO THE WALL</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Because to-day is some religious festival They had a priest say Mass, and even the Japanese, Heel up and weight on toe, must face the wall —Pedant in passion, learned in old courtesies, Vehement and witty she had seemed—; the Venetian lady Who had seemed to glide to some intrigue in her red shoes, Her domino, her panniered skirt copied from Longhi; The meditative critic; all are on their toes, Even our Beauty with her Turkish trousers on. Because the priest must have like every dog his day Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, We and our dolls being but the world were best away. </div> </div> <h3>IV</h3> <h3>THE END OF DAY</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> She is playing like a child And penance is the play, Fantastical and wild Because the end of day Shows her that some one soon Will come from the house, and say— Though play is but half-done— 'Come in and leave the play.'— </div> </div> <h3>V</h3> <h3>HER RACE</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> She has not grown uncivil As narrow natures would And called the pleasures evil Happier days thought good; She knows herself a woman No red and white of a face, Or rank, raised from a common Unreckonable race; And how should her heart fail her Or sickness break her will With her dead brother's valour For an example still. </div> </div> <h3>VI</h3> <h3>HER COURAGE</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> When her soul flies to the predestined dancing-place (I have no speech but symbol, the pagan speech I made Amid the dreams of youth) let her come face to face, While wondering still to be a shade, with Grania's shade All but the perils of the woodland flight forgot That made her Dermuid dear, and some old cardinal Pacing with half-closed eyelids in a sunny spot Who had murmured of Giorgione at his latest breath— Aye and Achilles, Timor, Babar, Barhaim, all Who have lived in joy and laughed into the face of Death. </div> </div> <h3>VII</h3> <h3>HER FRIENDS BRING HER A CHRISTMAS TREE</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Pardon, great enemy, Without an angry thought We've carried in our tree, And here and there have bought Till all the boughs are gay, And she may look from the bed On pretty things that may Please a fantastic head. Give her a little grace, What if a laughing eye Have looked into your face— It is about to die. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>EGO DOMINUS TUUS</h2> Hic On the grey sand beside the shallow stream Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still A lamp burns on beside the open book That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon And though you have passed the best of life still trace Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion Magical shapes. Ille By the help of an image I call to my own opposite, summon all That I have handled least, least looked upon. Hic And I would find myself and not an image. Ille That is our modern hope and by its light We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush We are but critics, or but half create, Timid, entangled, empty and abashed Lacking the countenance of our friends. Hic And yet The chief imagination of Christendom Dante Alighieri so utterly found himself That he has made that hollow face of his More plain to the mind's eye than any face But that of Christ. Ille And did he find himself, Or was the hunger that had made it hollow A hunger for the apple on the bough Most out of reach? and is that spectral image The man that Lapo and that Guido knew? I think he fashioned from his opposite An image that might have been a stony face, Staring upon a bedouin's horse-hair roof From doored and windowed cliff, or half upturned Among the coarse grass and the camel dung. He set his chisel to the hardest stone. Being mocked by Guido for his lecherous life, Derided and deriding, driven out To climb that stair and eat that bitter bread, He found the unpersuadable justice, he found The most exalted lady loved by a man. Hic Yet surely there are men who have made their art Out of no tragic war, lovers of life, Impulsive men that look for happiness And sing when they have found it. Ille No, not sing, For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular and full of influence, And should they paint or write still it is action: The struggle of the fly in marmalade. The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours, The sentimentalist himself; while art Is but a vision of reality. What portion in the world can the artist have Who has awakened from the common dream But dissipation and despair? Hic And yet No one denies to Keats love of the world; Remember his deliberate happiness. Ille His art is happy but who knows his mind? I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window, For certainly he sank into his grave His senses and his heart unsatisfied, And made—being poor, ailing and ignorant, Shut out from all the luxury of the world, The coarse-bred son of a livery stable-keeper— Luxuriant song. Hic Why should you leave the lamp Burning alone beside an open book, And trace these characters upon the sands; A style is found by sedentary toil And by the imitation of great masters. Ille Because I seek an image, not a book. Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts. I call to the mysterious one who yet Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream And look most like me, being indeed my double, And prove of all imaginable things The most unlike, being my anti-self, And standing by these characters disclose All that I seek; and whisper it as though He were afraid the birds, who cry aloud Their momentary cries before it is dawn, Would carry it away to blasphemous men. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>A PRAYER ON GOING INTO MY HOUSE</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> God grant a blessing on this tower and cottage And on my heirs, if all remain unspoiled, No table, or chair or stool not simple enough For shepherd lads in Galilee; and grant That I myself for portions of the year May handle nothing and set eyes on nothing But what the great and passionate have used Throughout so many varying centuries. We take it for the norm; yet should I dream Sinbad the sailor's brought a painted chest, Or image, from beyond the Loadstone Mountain That dream is a norm; and should some limb of the devil Destroy the view by cutting down an ash That shades the road, or setting up a cottage Planned in a government office, shorten his life, Manacle his soul upon the Red Sea bottom. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>THE PHASES OF THE MOON</h2> An old man cocked his ear upon a bridge; He and his friend, their faces to the South, Had trod the uneven road. Their boots were soiled, Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape; They had kept a steady pace as though their beds, Despite a dwindling and late risen moon, Were distant. An old man cocked his ear. Aherne What made that sound? Robartes A rat or water-hen Splashed, or an otter slid into the stream. We are on the bridge; that shadow is the tower, And the light proves that he is reading still. He has found, after the manner of his kind, Mere images; chosen this place to live in Because, it may be, of the candle light From the far tower where Milton's platonist Sat late, or Shelley's visionary prince: The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved, An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil; And now he seeks in book or manuscript What he shall never find. Aherne Why should not you Who know it all ring at his door, and speak Just truth enough to show that his whole life Will scarcely find for him a broken crust Of all those truths that are your daily bread; And when you have spoken take the roads again? Robartes He wrote of me in that extravagant style He had learnt from Pater, and to round his tale Said I was dead; and dead I chose to be. Aherne Sing me the changes of the moon once more; True song, though speech: 'mine author sung it me.' Robartes Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon, The full and the moon's dark and all the crescents, Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty The cradles that a man must needs be rocked in: For there's no human life at the full or the dark. From the first crescent to the half, the dream But summons to adventure and the man Is always happy like a bird or a beast; But while the moon is rounding towards the full He follows whatever whim's most difficult Among whims not impossible, and though scarred As with the cat-o'-nine-tails of the mind, His body moulded from within his body Grows comelier. Eleven pass, and then Athenae takes Achilles by the hair, Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born, Because the heroes' crescent is the twelfth. And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must, Before the full moon, helpless as a worm. The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war In its own being, and when that war's begun There is no muscle in the arm; and after Under the frenzy of the fourteenth moon The soul begins to tremble into stillness, To die into the labyrinth of itself! Aherne Sing out the song; sing to the end, and sing The strange reward of all that discipline. Robartes All thought becomes an image and the soul Becomes a body: that body and that soul Too perfect at the full to lie in a cradle, Too lonely for the traffic of the world: Body and soul cast out and cast away Beyond the visible world. Aherne All dreams of the soul End in a beautiful man's or woman's body. Robartes Have you not always known it? Aherne The song will have it That those that we have loved got their long fingers From death, and wounds, or on Sinai's top, Or from some bloody whip in their own hands. They ran from cradle to cradle till at last Their beauty dropped out of the loneliness Of body and soul. Robartes The lovers' heart knows that. Aherne It must be that the terror in their eyes Is memory or foreknowledge of the hour When all is fed with light and heaven is bare. Robartes When the moon's full those creatures of the full Are met on the waste hills by country men Who shudder and hurry by: body and soul Estranged amid the strangeness of themselves, Caught up in contemplation, the mind's eye Fixed upon images that once were thought, For separate, perfect, and immovable Images can break the solitude Of lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes. And thereupon with aged, high-pitched voice Aherne laughed, thinking of the man within, His sleepless candle and laborious pen. Robartes And after that the crumbling of the moon. The soul remembering its loneliness Shudders in many cradles; all is changed, It would be the World's servant, and as it serves, Choosing whatever task's most difficult Among tasks not impossible, it takes Upon the body and upon the soul The coarseness of the drudge. Aherne Before the full It sought itself and afterwards the world. Robartes Because you are forgotten, half out of life, And never wrote a book your thought is clear. Reformer, merchant, statesman, learned man, Dutiful husband, honest wife by turn, Cradle upon cradle, and all in flight and all Deformed because there is no deformity But saves us from a dream. Aherne And what of those That the last servile crescent has set free? Robartes Because all dark, like those that are all light, They are cast beyond the verge, and in a cloud, Crying to one another like the bats; And having no desire they cannot tell What's good or bad, or what it is to triumph At the perfection of one's own obedience; And yet they speak what's blown into the mind; Deformed beyond deformity, unformed, Insipid as the dough before it is baked, They change their bodies at a word. Aherne And then? Robartes When all the dough has been so kneaded up That it can take what form cook Nature fancy The first thin crescent is wheeled round once more. Aherne But the escape; the song's not finished yet. Robartes Hunchback and saint and fool are the last crescents. The burning bow that once could shoot an arrow Out of the up and down, the wagon wheel Of beauty's cruelty and wisdom's chatter, Out of that raving tide is drawn betwixt Deformity of body and of mind. Aherne Were not our beds far off I'd ring the bell, Stand under the rough roof-timbers of the hall Beside the castle door, where all is stark Austerity, a place set out for wisdom That he will never find; I'd play a part; He would never know me after all these years But take me for some drunken country man; I'd stand and mutter there until he caught 'Hunchback and saint and fool,' and that they came Under the three last crescents of the moon, And then I'd stagger out. He'd crack his wits Day after day, yet never find the meaning. And then he laughed to think that what seemed hard Should be so simple—a bat rose from the hazels And circled round him with its squeaky cry, The light in the tower window was put out. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>THE CAT AND THE MOON</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> The cat went here and there And the moon spun round like a top, And the nearest kin of the moon The creeping cat looked up. Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon, For wander and wail as he would The pure cold light in the sky Troubled his animal blood. Minnaloushe runs in the grass, Lifting his delicate feet. Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance? When two close kindred meet What better than call a dance, Maybe the moon may learn, Tired of that courtly fashion, A new dance turn. Minnaloushe creeps through the grass From moonlit place to place, The sacred moon overhead Has taken a new phase. Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils Will pass from change to change, And that from round to crescent, From crescent to round they range? Minnaloushe creeps through the grass Alone, important and wise, And lifts to the changing moon His changing eyes. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>THE SAINT AND THE HUNCHBACK</h2> Hunchback Stand up and lift your hand and bless A man that finds great bitterness In thinking of his lost renown. A Roman Caesar is held down Under this hump. Saint God tries each man According to a different plan. I shall not cease to bless because I lay about me with the taws That night and morning I may thrash Greek Alexander from my flesh, Augustus Caesar, and after these That great rogue Alcibiades. Hunchback To all that in your flesh have stood And blessed, I give my gratitude, Honoured by all in their degrees, But most to Alcibiades. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>TWO SONGS OF A FOOL</h2> <h3>I</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there; And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence. </div> <div class="stanza"> I start out of my sleep to think Some day I may forget Their food and drink; Or, the house door left unshut, The hare may run till it's found The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound. </div> <div class="stanza"> I bear a burden that might well try Men that do all by rule, And what can I That am a wandering witted fool But pray to God that He ease My great responsibilities. </div> </div> <h3>II</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire, The speckled cat slept on my knee; We never thought to enquire Where the brown hare might be, And whether the door were shut. Who knows how she drank the wind Stretched up on two legs from the mat, Before she had settled her mind To drum with her heel and to leap: Had I but awakened from sleep And called her name she had heard, It may be, and had not stirred, That now, it may be, has found The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>ANOTHER SONG OF A FOOL</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands. </div> <div class="stanza"> Once he lived a schoolmaster With a stark, denying look, A string of scholars went in fear Of his great birch and his great book. </div> <div class="stanza"> Like the clangour of a bell, Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet, That is how he learnt so well To take the roses for his meat. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>THE DOUBLE VISION OF MICHAEL ROBARTES</h2> <h3>I</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> On the grey rock of Cashel the mind's eye Has called up the cold spirits that are born When the old moon is vanished from the sky And the new still hides her horn. </div> <div class="stanza"> Under blank eyes and fingers never still The particular is pounded till it is man, When had I my own will? Oh, not since life began. </div> <div class="stanza"> Constrained, arraigned, baffled, bent and unbent By these wire-jointed jaws and limbs of wood, Themselves obedient, Knowing not evil and good; </div> <div class="stanza"> Obedient to some hidden magical breath. They do not even feel, so abstract are they, So dead beyond our death, Triumph that we obey. </div> </div> <h3>II</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw, A Buddha, hand at rest, Hand lifted up that blest; </div> <div class="stanza"> And right between these two a girl at play That it may be had danced her life away, For now being dead it seemed That she of dancing dreamed. </div> <div class="stanza"> Although I saw it all in the mind's eye There can be nothing solider till I die; I saw by the moon's light Now at its fifteenth night. </div> <div class="stanza"> One lashed her tail; her eyes lit by the moon Gazed upon all things known, all things unknown, In triumph of intellect With motionless head erect. </div> <div class="stanza"> That other's moonlit eyeballs never moved, Being fixed on all things loved, all things unloved, Yet little peace he had For those that love are sad. </div> <div class="stanza"> Oh, little did they care who danced between, And little she by whom her dance was seen So that she danced. No thought, Body perfection brought, </div> <div class="stanza"> For what but eye and ear silence the mind With the minute particulars of mankind? Mind moved yet seemed to stop As 'twere a spinning-top. </div> <div class="stanza"> In contemplation had those three so wrought Upon a moment, and so stretched it out That they, time overthrown, Were dead yet flesh and bone. </div> </div> <h3>III</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> I knew that I had seen, had seen at last That girl my unremembering nights hold fast Or else my dreams that fly, If I should rub an eye, </div> <div class="stanza"> And yet in flying fling into my meat A crazy juice that makes the pulses beat As though I had been undone By Homer's Paragon </div> <div class="stanza"> Who never gave the burning town a thought; To such a pitch of folly I am brought, Being caught between the pull Of the dark moon and the full, </div> <div class="stanza"> The commonness of thought and images That have the frenzy of our Western seas. Thereon I made my moan, And after kissed a stone, </div> <div class="stanza"> And after that arranged it in a song Seeing that I, ignorant for so long, Had been rewarded thus In Cormac's ruined house. </div> </div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.