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William Butler Yeats

SEVEN POEMS AND A FRAGMENT

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS.

 

THE CUALA PRESS
DUNDRUM
MCMXXII

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

PAGE

All Souls’ Night

1

Suggested by a Picture of a Black Centaur

6

Thoughts upon the Present State of the World

7

The New Faces

14

A Prayer for My Son

14

Cuchulain the Girl and the Fool

16

The Wheel

18

A New End for ‘The King’s Threshold’

18

NOTES

Note on ‘Thoughts Upon the Present State of the World’ Section Six

23

Note on The New End to ‘The King’s Threshold’

24  

SEVEN POEMS AND A FRAGMENT: BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS.

ALL SOULS’ NIGHT

’Tis All Souls’ Night and the great Christ Church bell,

And many a lesser bell, sound through the room,

For it is now midnight;

And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel

Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come,

For it is a ghost’s right,

His element is so fine

Being sharpened by his death,

To drink from the wine-breath

While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

I need some mind that, if the cannon sound

From every quarter of the world, can stay

Wound in mind’s pondering,

As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;

Because I have a marvellous thing to say,

A certain marvellous thing

None but the living mock,

Though not for sober ear;

It may be all that hear

Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

H—’s the first I call. He loved strange thought

And knew that sweet extremity of pride

That’s called platonic love,

And that to such a pitch of passion wrought

Nothing could bring him, when his lady died,

Anodyne for his love.

Words were but wasted breath;

One dear hope had he:

The inclemency

Of that or the next winter would be death.

Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell

Whether of her or God he thought the most,

But think that his mind’s eye,

When upward turned, on one sole image fell,

And that a slight companionable ghost,

Wild with divinity,

Had so lit up the whole

Immense miraculous house,

The Bible promised us,

It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.

On Florence Emery I call the next,

Who finding the first wrinkles on a face

Admired and beautiful,

And knowing that the future would be vexed

With ’minished beauty, multiplied commonplace,

Preferred to teach a school,

Away from neighbour or friend

Among dark skins, and there

Permit foul years to wear

Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.

Before that end much had she ravelled out

From a discourse in figurative speech

By some learned Indian

On the soul’s journey. How it is whirled about,

Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,

Until it plunged into the sun;

And there free and yet fast,

Being both Chance and Choice,

Forget its broken toys

And sink into its own delight at last.

And I call up MacGregor from the grave,

For in my first hard springtime we were friends,

Although of late estranged.

I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,

And told him so, but friendship never ends;

And what if mind seem changed,

And it seem changed with the mind,

When thoughts rise up unbid

On generous things that he did

And I grow half contented to be blind.

He had much industry at setting out,

Much boisterous courage, before loneliness

Had driven him crazed;

For meditations upon unknown thought

Make human intercourse grow less and less;

They are neither paid nor praised.

But he’d object to the host,

The glass because my glass;

A ghost-lover he was

And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.

But names are nothing. What matter who it be,

So that his elements have grown so fine

The fume of muscatel

Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy

No living man can drink from the whole wine.

I have mummy truths to tell

Whereat the living mock,

Though not for sober ear,

For maybe all that hear

Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

Such thought—such thought have I that hold it tight

Till meditation master all its parts,

Nothing can stay my glance

Until that glance run in the world’s despite

To where the damned have howled away their hearts,

And where the blessed dance;

Such thought, that in it bound

I need no other thing

Wound in mind’s wandering,

As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF A BLACK CENTAUR

Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,

Even where the horrible green parrots call and swing.

My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.

I knew that horse play, knew it for a murderous thing.

What wholesome sun has ripened is wholesome food to eat

And that alone, yet I being driven half insane

Because of some green wing, gathered old mummy wheat

In the mad abstract dark and ground it grain by grain

And after baked it slowly in an oven; but now

I bring full flavoured wine out of a barrel found

Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew

When Alexander’s empire past, they slept so sound.

Stretch out your limbs and sleep a long Saturnian sleep;

I have loved you better than my soul for all my words,

And there is none so fit to keep a watch and keep

Unwearied eyes upon those horrible green birds.

THOUGHTS UPON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE WORLD.

I

Many ingenious lovely things are gone

That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude;

Above the murderous treachery of the moon

Or all that wayward ebb and flow. There stood

Amid the ornamental bronze and stone

An ancient image made of olive wood;

And gone are Phidias’ carven ivories

And all his golden grasshoppers and bees.

We too had many pretty toys when young;

A law indifferent to blame or praise

To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong

Melt down, as it were wax in the sun’s rays;

Public opinion ripening for so long

We thought it would outlive all future days.

O what fine thought we had because we thought

That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,

And a great army but a showy thing;

What matter that no cannon had been turned

Into a ploughshare; parliament and king

Thought that unless a little powder burned

The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting

And yet it lack all glory; and perchance

The guardsmen’s drowsy chargers would not prance.

Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare

Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery

Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,

To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;

The night can sweat with terror as before

We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,

And planned to bring the world under a rule

Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned

Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant

From shallow wits, who knows no work can stand,

Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent

On master work of intellect or hand,

No honour leave its mighty monument,

Has but one comfort left: all triumph would

But break upon his ghostly solitude.

And other comfort were a bitter wound:

To be in love and love what vanishes.

Greeks were but lovers; all that country round

None dared admit, if such a thought were his,

Incendiary or bigot could be found

To burn that stump on the Acropolis,

Or break in bits the famous ivories

Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees?

II

When Loie Fuller’s Chinese dancers enwound

A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth,

It seemed that a dragon of air

Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round

Or hurried them off on its own furious path;

So the platonic year

Whirls out new right and wrong

Whirls in the old instead;

All men are dancers and their tread

Goes to the barbarous clangour of gong.

III

Some moralist or mythological poet

Compares the solitary soul to a swan;

I am content with that,

Contented that a troubled mirror show it

Before that brief gleam of its life be gone,

An image of its state;

The wings half spread for flight,

The breast thrust out in pride

Whether to play or to ride

Those winds that clamour of approaching night.

A man in his own secret meditation

Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made

In art or politics;

Some platonist affirms that in the station

Where we should cast off body and trade

The ancient habit sticks,

And that if our works could

But vanish with our breath

That were a lucky death,

For triumph can but mar our solitude.

The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:

That image can bring wildness, bring a rage

To end all things, to end

What my laborious life imagined, even

The half imagined, the half written page;

O but we dreamed to mend

Whatever mischief seemed

To afflict mankind, but now

That winds of winter blow

Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

IV

We, who seven years ago

Talked of honour and of truth,

Shriek with pleasure if we show

The weasel’s twist, the weasel’s tooth.

V

Come let us mock at the great

That had such burdens on the mind

And toiled so hard and late

To leave some monument behind,

Nor thought of the levelling wind.

Come let us mock at the wise;

With all those calendars whereon

They fixed old aching eyes,

They never saw how seasons run,

And now but gape at the sun.

Come let us mock at the good

That fancied goodness might be gay,

Grown tired of their solitude,

Upon some brand-new happy day:

Wind shrieked—and where are they?

Mock mockers after that

That would not lift a hand maybe

To help good, wise or great

To bar that foul storm out, for we

Traffic in mockery.

VI

Violence upon the roads: violence of horses;

Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded

On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane,

But wearied running round and round in their courses

All break and vanish, and evil gathers head:

Herodias’ daughters have returned again

A sudden blast of dusty wind and after

Thunder of feet, tumult of images,

Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind;

And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter

All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries,

According to the wind, for all are blind.

But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon

There lurches past, his great eyes without thought

Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks,

That insolent fiend Robert Artisson

To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought

Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.

THE NEW FACES

If you, that have grown old were the first dead

Neither Caltapa tree nor scented lime

Should hear my living feet, nor would I tread

Where we wrought that shall break the teeth of time.

Let the new faces play what tricks they will

In the old rooms; night can outbalance day,

Our shadows rove the garden gravel still,

The living seem more shadowy than they.

A PRAYER FOR MY SON

Bid a strong ghost stand at the head

That my Michael may sleep sound,

Nor cry, nor turn in the bed

Till his morning meal come round;

And may departing twilight keep

All dread afar till morning’s back

That his mother may not lack

Her fill of sleep.

Bid the ghost have sword in hand:

There are malicious things, although

Few dream that they exist,

Who have planned his murder, for they know

Of some most haughty deed or thought

That waits upon his future days,

And would through hatred of the bays

Bring that to nought.

Though You can fashion everything

From nothing every day, and teach

The morning stars to sing,

You have lacked articulate speech

To tell Your simplest want, and known,

Wailing upon a woman’s knee,

All of that worst ignominy

Of flesh and bone;

And when through all the town there ran

The servants of Your enemy

A woman and a man,

Unless the Holy Writings lie,

Have borne You through the smooth and rough

And through the fertile and waste,

Protecting till the danger past

With human love.

CUCHULAIN THE GIRL AND THE FOOL

THE GIRL.

I am jealous of the looks men turn on you

For all men love your worth; and I must rage

At my own image in the looking-glass

That’s so unlike myself that when you praise it

It is as though you praise another, or even

Mock me with praise of my mere opposite;

And when I wake towards morn I dread myself

For the heart cries that what deception wins

My cruelty must keep; and so begone

If you have seen that image and not my worth.

CUCHULAIN.

All men have praised my strength but not my worth.

THE GIRL.

If you are no more strength than I am beauty

I will find out some cavern in the hills

And live among the ancient holy men,

For they at least have all men’s reverence

And have no need of cruelty to keep

What no deception won.

CUCHULAIN.

I have heard them say

That men have reverence for their holiness

And not their worth.

THE GIRL.

God loves us for our worth;

But what care I that long for a man’s love.

THE FOOL BY THE ROADSIDE.

When my days that have

From cradle run to grave

From grave to cradle run instead;

When thoughts that a fool

Has wound upon a spool

Are but loose thread, are but loose thread;

When cradle and spool are past

And I mere shade at last

Coagulate of stuff

Transparent like the wind,

I think that I may find

A faithful love, a faithful love.

THE WHEEL

Through winter-time we call on spring,

And through the spring on summer call,

And when abounding hedges sing

Declare that winter’s best of all;

And after that there’s nothing good

Because the spring-time has not come—

Nor know that what disturbs our blood

Is but its longing for the tomb.

A NEW END FOR ‘THE KING’S THRESHOLD’

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

Die Seanchan and proclaim the right of the poets.

SEANCHAN.

Come nearer me, that I may know how face

Differs from face, and touch you with my hands.

O more than kin, O more than children could be,

For children are but born out of our blood

And share our frailty. O my chicks, my chicks,

That I have nourished underneath my wings

And fed upon my soul. (He stands up and begins to walk

down steps) I need no help.

He needs no help that joy has lifted up

Like some miraculous beast out of Ezekiel.

The man that dies has the chief part in the story,

And I will mock and mock and mock that image yonder

That evil picture in the sky—no, no—

I have all my strength again, I will outface it.

O look upon the moon that’s standing there

In the blue daylight—notice her complexion

Because it is the white of leprosy

And the contagion that afflicts mankind

Falls from the moon. When I and these are dead

We should be carried to some windy hill

To lie there with uncovered face awhile

That mankind and that leper there may know

Dead faces laugh.

(He falls and then half rises.)

King, king, dead faces laugh.

(He dies)

OLDEST PUPIL.

King, king, he is dead; some strange triumphant thought

So filled his heart with joy that it has burst

Being grown too mighty for our frailty,

And we who gaze grow like him and abhor

The moments that come between us and that death

You promised us.

KING.

Take up his body.

Go where you please and lay it where you please,

So that I cannot see his face or any

That cried him towards his death.

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

Dead faces laugh!

The ancient right is gone, the new remains

And that is death.

(They go towards the king holding out their halters)

We are impatient men,

So gather up the halters in your hands.

KING.

Drive them away.

(He goes into the palace. The soldiers block the way before

the pupils.)

SOLDIER.

Here is no place for you,

For he and his pretensions now are finished.

Begone before the men at arms are bidden

To hurl you from the door.

OLDEST PUPIL.

Take up his body

And cry that driven from the populous door

He seeks high waters and the mountain birds

To claim a portion of their solitude.

(They make a litter with cloak and staffs and lay Seanchan

on it.)

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

And cry that when they took his ancient right

They took all common sleep; therefore he claims

The mountain for his mattress and his pillow.

OLDEST PUPIL.

And there he can sleep on, not noticing

Although the world be changed from worse to worse,

Amid the changeless clamour of the curlew.

(They raise the litter on their shoulders and move a few steps)

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

(motioning to them to stop)

Yet make triumphant music; sing aloud

For coming times will bless what he has blessed

And curse what he has cursed.

OLDEST PUPIL.

No, no, be still;

Or pluck a solemn music from the strings.

You wrong his greatness speaking so of triumph.

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

O silver trumpets, be you lifted up

And cry to the great race that is to come.

Long-throated swans upon the waves of time

Sing loudly, for beyond the wall of the world

That race may hear our music and awake.

OLDEST PUPIL.

(motioning the musicians to lower their trumpets)

Not what it leaves behind it in the light

But what it carries with it to the dark

Exalts the soul; nor song nor trumpet-blast

Can call up races from the worsening world

To mend the wrong and mar the solitude

Of the great shade we follow to the tomb.

(Fedelm and the pupils go out carrying the litter. Some play

a mournful music.)

NOTE ON ‘THOUGHTS UPON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE WORLD’ SECTION SIX.

The country people see at times certain apparitions whom they name now ‘fallen angels’ now ‘ancient inhabitants of the country,’ and describe as riding at whiles ‘with flowers upon the heads of the horses.’ I have assumed in the sixth poem that these horsemen, now that the times worsen, give way to worse. My last symbol Robert Artisson was an evil spirit much run after in Kilkenny at the start of the fourteenth century. Are not those who travel in the whirling dust also in the Platonic Year?—W. B. Y.

NOTE ON THE NEW END TO ‘THE KING’S THRESHOLD’

Upon the revival of this play at the Abbey Theatre a few weeks ago it was played with this new end. There were a few other changes. I had originally intended to end the play tragically and would have done so but for a friend who used to say ‘O do write comedy & have a few happy moments in the Theatre.’ My unhappy moments were because a tragic effect is very fragile and a wrong intonation, or even a wrong light or costume will spoil it all. However the play remained always of the nature of tragedy and so subject to vicissitude.

 

Here ends, ‘Seven Poems and a Fragment:’ by William Butler Yeats: with a decoration by T. Sturge Moore. Five hundred copies of this book have been printed and published by Elizabeth Corbet Yeats on paper made in Ireland, at the Cuala Press, Churchtown, Dundrum, in the County of Dublin, Ireland. Finished in the third week of April in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-two.