Project Gutenberg's The Wild Swans at Coole, by William Butler (W.B.) Yeats This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Wild Swans at Coole Author: William Butler (W.B.) Yeats Release Date: May 23, 2010 [EBook #32491] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE *** Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE BY W. B. YEATS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1919 All rights reserved Copyright, 1917 and 1918, By MARGARET C. ANDERSON. Copyright, 1918, By HARRIET MONROE. Copyright, 1918 and 1919, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1919. J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE This book is, in part, a reprint of The Wild Swans at Coole, printed a year ago on my sister's hand-press at Dundrum, Co. Dublin. I have not, however, reprinted a play which may be a part of a book of new plays suggested by the dance plays of Japan, and I have added a number of new poems. Michael Robartes and John Aherne, whose names occur in one or other of these, are characters in some stories I wrote years ago, who have once again become a part of the phantasmagoria through which I can alone express my convictions about the world. I have the fancy that I read the name John Aherne among those of men prosecuted for making a disturbance at the first production of "The Play Boy," which may account for his animosity to myself. W. B. Y. Ballylee, Co. Galway, September 1918. CONTENTS page The Wild Swans at Coole 1 In Memory of Major Robert Gregory 4 An Irish Airman foresees his Death 13 Men improve with the Years 14 The Collar-Bone of a Hare 15 Under the Round Tower 17 Solomon to Sheba 19 The Living Beauty 21 A Song 22 To a Young Beauty 23 To a Young Girl 24 The Scholars 25 Tom O'Roughley 26 The Sad Shepherd 27 Lines written in Dejection 39 The Dawn 40 On Woman 41 The Fisherman 44 The Hawk 46 Memory 47 Her Praise 48 The People 50 His Phoenix 54 A Thought from Propertius 58 [v] [vi] [vii] [viii] Broken Dreams 59 A Deep-Sworn Vow 63 Presences 64 The Balloon of the Mind 66 To a Squirrel at Kyle-Na-Gno 67 On being asked for a War Poem 68 In Memory of Alfred Pollexfen 69 Upon a Dying Lady 72 Ego Dominus Tuus 79 A Prayer on going into my House 86 The Phases of the Moon 88 The Cat and the Moon 102 The Saint and the Hunchback 104 Two Songs of a Fool 106 Another Song of a Fool 108 The Double Vision of Michael Robartes 109 Note 115 THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine and fifty swans. The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count; I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings Upon their clamorous wings. I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore. All's changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread. Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold, Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. But now they drift on the still water Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build, By what lake's edge or pool Delight men's eyes, when I awake some day To find they have flown away? [ix] [1] [2] [3] [4] IN MEMORY OF MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY 1 Now that we're almost settled in our house I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us Beside a fire of turf in the ancient tower, And having talked to some late hour Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed: Discoverers of forgotten truth Or mere companions of my youth, All, all are in my thoughts to-night, being dead. 2 Always we'd have the new friend meet the old, And we are hurt if either friend seem cold, And there is salt to lengthen out the smart In the affections of our heart, And quarrels are blown up upon that head; But not a friend that I would bring This night can set us quarrelling, For all that come into my mind are dead. 3 Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst; much falling he Brooded upon sanctity Till all his Greek and Latin learning seemed A long blast upon the horn that brought A little nearer to his thought A measureless consummation that he dreamed. 4 And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart In a most desolate stony place, Towards nightfall upon a race Passionate and simple like his heart. 5 And then I think of old George Pollexfen, In muscular youth well known to Mayo men For horsemanship at meets or at race-courses, That could have shown how purebred horses And solid men, for all their passion, live But as the outrageous stars incline By opposition, square and trine; Having grown sluggish and contemplative. 6 They were my close companions many a year, A portion of my mind and life, as it were, And now their breathless faces seem to look Out of some old picture-book; I am accustomed to their lack of breath, [5] [6] [7] [8] But not that my dear friend's dear son, Our Sidney and our perfect man, Could share in that discourtesy of death. 7 For all things the delighted eye now sees Were loved by him; the old storm-broken trees That cast their shadows upon road and bridge; The tower set on the stream's edge; The ford where drinking cattle make a stir Nightly, and startled by that sound The water-hen must change her ground; He might have been your heartiest welcomer. 8 When with the Galway foxhounds he would ride From Castle Taylor to the Roxborough side Or Esserkelly plain, few kept his pace; At Mooneen he had leaped a place So perilous that half the astonished meet Had shut their eyes, and where was it He rode a race without a bit? And yet his mind outran the horses' feet. 9 We dreamed that a great painter had been born To cold Clare rock and Galway rock and thorn, To that stern colour and that delicate line That are our secret discipline Wherein the gazing heart doubles her might. Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, And yet he had the intensity To have published all to be a world's delight. 10 What other could so well have counselled us In all lovely intricacies of a house As he that practised or that understood All work in metal or in wood, In moulded plaster or in carven stone? Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, And all he did done perfectly As though he had but that one trade alone. 11 Some burn damp fagots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare. Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, As 'twere all life's epitome. What made us dream that he could comb grey hair? 12 I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved, Or boyish intellect approved, [9] [10] [11] [12] With some appropriate commentary on each; Until imagination brought A fitter welcome; but a thought Of that late death took all my heart for speech. AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES HIS DEATH I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan's poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor angry crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death. MEN IMPROVE WITH THE YEARS I am worn out with dreams; A weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams; And all day long I look Upon this lady's beauty As though I had found in book A pictured beauty, Pleased to have filled the eyes Or the discerning ears, Delighted to be but wise, For men improve with the years; And yet and yet Is this my dream, or the truth? O would that we had met When I had my burning youth; But I grow old among dreams, A weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams. THE COLLAR-BONE OF A HARE Would I could cast a sail on the water Where many a king has gone And many a king's daughter, And alight at the comely trees and the lawn, The playing upon pipes and the dancing, And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for a kiss. [13] [14] [15] I would find by the edge of that water The collar-bone of a hare Worn thin by the lapping of water, And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare At the old bitter world where they marry in churches, And laugh over the untroubled water At all who marry in churches, Through the white thin bone of a hare. UNDER THE ROUND TOWER 'Although I'd lie lapped up in linen A deal I'd sweat and little earn If I should live as live the neighbours,' Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne; 'Stretch bones till the daylight come On great-grandfather's battered tomb.' Upon a grey old battered tombstone In Glendalough beside the stream, Where the O'Byrnes and Byrnes are buried, He stretched his bones and fell in a dream Of sun and moon that a good hour Bellowed and pranced in the round tower; Of golden king and silver lady, Bellowing up and bellowing round, Till toes mastered a sweet measure, Mouth mastered a sweet sound, Prancing round and prancing up Until they pranced upon the top. That golden king and that wild lady Sang till stars began to fade, Hands gripped in hands, toes close together, Hair spread on the wind they made; That lady and that golden king Could like a brace of blackbirds sing. 'It's certain that my luck is broken,' That rambling jailbird Billy said; 'Before nightfall I'll pick a pocket And snug it in a feather-bed, I cannot find the peace of home On great-grandfather's battered tomb.' SOLOMON TO SHEBA Sang Solomon to Sheba, And kissed her dusky face, 'All day long from mid-day We have talked in the one place, All day long from shadowless noon We have gone round and round In the narrow theme of love Like an old horse in a pound.' To Solomon sang Sheba, Planted on his knees, 'If you had broached a matter That might the learned please, You had before the sun had thrown Our shadows on the ground [16] [17] [18] [19] Discovered that my thoughts, not it, Are but a narrow pound.' Sang Solomon to Sheba, And kissed her Arab eyes, 'There's not a man or woman Born under the skies Dare match in learning with us two, And all day long we have found There's not a thing but love can make The world a narrow pound.' THE LIVING BEAUTY I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content— Seeing that time has frozen up the blood, The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent— From beauty that is cast out of a mould In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears, Appears, and when we have gone is gone again, Being more indifferent to our solitude Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old, The living beauty is for younger men, We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears. A SONG I thought no more was needed Youth to prolong Than dumb-bell and foil To keep the body young. Oh, who could have foretold That the heart grows old? Though I have many words, What woman's satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? Oh, who could have foretold That the heart grows old? I have not lost desire But the heart that I had, I thought 'twould burn my body Laid on the death-bed. But who could have foretold That the heart grows old? TO A YOUNG BEAUTY Dear fellow-artist, why so free With every sort of company, With every Jack and Jill? Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest Soon topples down the hill. You may, that mirror for a school, Be passionate, not bountiful As common beauties may, [20] [21] [22] [23] Who were not born to keep in trim With old Ezekiel's cherubim But those of Beaujolet. I know what wages beauty gives, How hard a life her servant lives, Yet praise the winters gone; There is not a fool can call me friend, And I may dine at journey's end With Landor and with Donne. TO A YOUNG GIRL My dear, my dear, I know More than another What makes your heart beat so; Not even your own mother Can know it as I know, Who broke my heart for her When the wild thought, That she denies And has forgot, Set all her blood astir And glittered in her eyes. THE SCHOLARS Bald heads forgetful of their sins, Old, learned, respectable bald heads Edit and annotate the lines That young men, tossing on their beds, Rhymed out in love's despair To flatter beauty's ignorant ear. They'll cough in the ink to the world's end; Wear out the carpet with their shoes Earning respect; have no strange friend; If they have sinned nobody knows. Lord, what would they say Should their Catullus walk that way? TOM O'ROUGHLEY 'Though logic choppers rule the town, And every man and maid and boy Has marked a distant object down, An aimless joy is a pure joy,' Or so did Tom O'Roughley say That saw the surges running by, 'And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey. 'If little planned is little sinned But little need the grave distress. What's dying but a second wind? How but in zigzag wantonness Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?' Or something of that sort he said, 'And if my dearest friend were dead I'd dance a measure on his grave.' [24] [25] [26] THE SAD SHEPHERD Shepherd That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year I wished before it ceased. Goatherd Nor bird nor beast Could make me wish for anything this day, Being old, but that the old alone might die, And that would be against God's Providence. Let the young wish. But what has brought you here? Never until this moment have we met Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap From stone to stone. Shepherd I am looking for strayed sheep; Something has troubled me and in my trouble I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone, For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble And make the daylight sweet once more; but when I had driven every rhyme into its place The sheep had gone from theirs. Goatherd I know right well What turned so good a shepherd from his charge. Shepherd He that was best in every country sport And every country craft, and of us all Most courteous to slow age and hasty youth Is dead. Goatherd The boy that brings my griddle cake Brought the bare news. Shepherd He had thrown the crook away And died in the great war beyond the sea. Goatherd He had often played his pipes among my hills And when he played it was their loneliness, The exultation of their stone, that cried Under his fingers. Shepherd I had it from his mother, And his own flock was browsing at the door. Goatherd How does she bear her grief? There is not a shepherd But grows more gentle when he speaks her name, Remembering kindness done, and how can I, That found when I had neither goat nor grazing New welcome and old wisdom at her fire Till winter blasts were gone, but speak of her Even before his children and his wife. [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] Shepherd She goes about her house erect and calm Between the pantry and the linen chest, Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooks Her labouring men, as though her darling lived But for her grandson now; there is no change But such as I have seen upon her face Watching our shepherd sports at harvest-time When her son's turn was over. Goatherd Sing your song, I too have rhymed my reveries, but youth Is hot to show whatever it has found And till that's done can neither work nor wait. Old goatherds and old goats, if in all else Youth can excel them in accomplishment, Are learned in waiting. Shepherd You cannot but have seen That he alone had gathered up no gear, Set carpenters to work on no wide table, On no long bench nor lofty milking shed As others will, when first they take possession, But left the house as in his father's time As though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo, No settled man. And now that he is gone There's nothing of him left but half a score Of sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes. Goatherd You have put the thought in rhyme. Shepherd I worked all day And when 'twas done so little had I done That maybe 'I am sorry' in plain prose Had sounded better to your mountain fancy. [He sings. 'Like the speckled bird that steers Thousands of leagues oversea, And runs for a while or a while half-flies Upon his yellow legs through our meadows, He stayed for a while; and we Had scarcely accustomed our ears To his speech at the break of day, Had scarcely accustomed our eyes To his shape in the lengthening shadows, Where the sheep are thrown in the pool, When he vanished from ears and eyes. I had wished a dear thing on that day I heard him first, but man is a fool.' Goatherd You sing as always of the natural life, And I that made like music in my youth Hearing it now have sighed for that young man And certain lost companions of my own. Shepherd They say that on your barren mountain ridge [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] You have measured out the road that the soul treads When it has vanished from our natural eyes; That you have talked with apparitions. Goatherd Indeed My daily thoughts since the first stupor of youth Have found the path my goats' feet cannot find. Shepherd Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have plucked Some medicable herb to make our grief Less bitter. Goatherd They have brought me from that ridge Seed pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy. [Sings. 'He grows younger every second That were all his birthdays reckoned Much too solemn seemed; Because of what he had dreamed, Or the ambitions that he served, Much too solemn and reserved. Jaunting, journeying To his own dayspring, He unpacks the loaded pern Of all 'twas pain or joy to learn, Of all that he had made. The outrageous war shall fade; At some old winding whitethorn root He'll practice on the shepherd's flute, Or on the close-cropped grass Court his shepherd lass, Or run where lads reform our day-time Till that is their long shouting play-time; Knowledge he shall unwind Through victories of the mind, Till, clambering at the cradle side, He dreams himself his mother's pride, All knowledge lost in trance Of sweeter ignorance.' Shepherd When I have shut these ewes and this old ram Into the fold, we'll to the woods and there Cut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn bark But put no name and leave them at her door. To know the mountain and the valley grieve May be a quiet thought to wife and mother, And children when they spring up shoulder high. LINES WRITTEN IN DEJECTION When have I last looked on The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies Of the dark leopards of the moon? All the wild witches those most noble ladies, For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone. [36] [37] [38] [39] The holy centaurs of the hills are banished; And I have nothing but harsh sun; Heroic mother moon has vanished, And now that I have come to fifty years I must endure the timid sun. THE DAWN I would be ignorant as the dawn That has looked down On that old queen measuring a town With the pin of a brooch, Or on the withered men that saw From their pedantic Babylon The careless planets in their courses, The stars fade out where the moon comes, And took their tablets and did sums; I would be ignorant as the dawn That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses; I would be—for no knowledge is worth a straw— Ignorant and wanton as the dawn. ON WOMAN May God be praised for woman That gives up all her mind, A man may find in no man A friendship of her kind That covers all he has brought As with her flesh and bone, Nor quarrels with a thought Because it is not her own. Though pedantry denies It's plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens. Yet never could, although They say he counted grass, Count all the praises due When Sheba was his lass, When she the iron wrought, or When from the smithy fire It shuddered in the water: Harshness of their desire That made them stretch and yawn, Pleasure that comes with sleep, Shudder that made them one. What else He give or keep God grant me—no, not here, For I am not so bold To hope a thing so dear Now I am growing old, But when if the tale's true The Pestle of the moon That pounds up all anew Brings me to birth again— To find what once I had And know what once I have known, Until I am driven mad, Sleep driven from my bed, [40] [41] [42] By tenderness and care, Pity, an aching head, Gnashing of teeth, despair; And all because of some one Perverse creature of chance, And live like Solomon That Sheba led a dance. THE FISHERMAN Although I can see him still, The freckled man who goes To a grey place on a hill In grey Connemara clothes At dawn to cast his flies, It's long since I began To call up to the eyes This wise and simple man. All day I'd looked in the face What I had hoped 'twould be To write for my own race And the reality; The living men that I hate, The dead man that I loved, The craven man in his seat, The insolent unreproved, And no knave brought to book Who has won a drunken cheer, The witty man and his joke Aimed at the commonest ear, The clever man who cries The catch-cries of the clown, The beating down of the wise And great Art beaten down. Maybe a twelvemonth since Suddenly I began, In scorn of this audience, Imagining a man And his sun-freckled face, And grey Connemara cloth, Climbing up to a place Where stone is dark under froth, And the down turn of his wrist When the flies drop in the stream: A man who does not exist, A man who is but a dream; And cried, 'Before I am old I shall have written him one Poem maybe as cold And passionate as the dawn.' THE HAWK 'Call down the hawk from the air; Let him be hooded or caged Till the yellow eye has grown mild, For larder and spit are bare, The old cook enraged, The scullion gone wild.' 'I will not be clapped in a hood, [43] [44] [45] [46] Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist, Now I have learnt to be proud Hovering over the wood In the broken mist Or tumbling cloud.' 'What tumbling cloud did you cleave, Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind, Last evening? that I, who had sat Dumbfounded before a knave, Should give to my friend A pretence of wit.' MEMORY One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain Because the mountain grass Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain. HER PRAISE She is foremost of those that I would hear praised. I have gone about the house, gone up and down As a man does who has published a new book Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown, And though I have turned the talk by hook or crook Until her praise should be the uppermost theme, A woman spoke of some new tale she had read, A man confusedly in a half dream As though some other name ran in his head. She is foremost of those that I would hear praised. I will talk no more of books or the long war But walk by the dry thorn until I have found Some beggar sheltering from the wind, and there Manage the talk until her name come round. If there be rags enough he will know her name And be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days, Though she had young men's praise and old men's blame, Among the poor both old and young gave her praise. THE PEOPLE 'What have I earned for all that work,' I said, 'For all that I have done at my own charge? The daily spite of this unmannerly town, Where who has served the most is most defamed, The reputation of his lifetime lost Between the night and morning. I might have lived, And you know well how great the longing has been, Where every day my footfall should have lit In the green shadow of Ferrara wall; Or climbed among the images of the past— The unperturbed and courtly images— Evening and morning, the steep street of Urbino To where the duchess and her people talked The stately midnight through until they stood In their great window looking at the dawn; [47] [48] [49] [50] [51]