William Butler Yeats

“ Shepherd
They say that on your barren mountain ridge
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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The coarse-bred son of a livery stablekeeper—
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.' ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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.
II
certain artist bring her
dolls and drawings
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 trees
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky; ”

“ Middleton'a earlier book, "Streets and Faces," was considered by the New York Post to be one of the four most interesting volumes of poetry published in America during 1917. "The New Day" will perhaps have a wider appeal to poetry lovers. Here are poems dealing with the present hour as well as many purely imaginative songs and lyrics. What the Chicago Tribune said of "Streets and Faces" applies perhaps equally to "The New Day": "Here is exquisite poetry. . . the angle of life is modern yet the poetry somehow makes you feel like "The Golden Treasury." ”

“ As common beauties may,
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 ”

“ For horsemanship at meets or at racecourses,
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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ They stood in the door and stood between
My great wood lectern 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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
Discovered that my thoughts, not it,
Are but a narrow pound.' ”

“ Constrained, arraigned, baffled, bent and unbent
By these wire-jointed jaws and limbs of wood,
Themselves obedient,
Knowing not evil and good;
Obedient to some hidden magical breath.
They do not even feel, so abstract are they,
So dead beyond our death,
Triumph that we obey. ”

“ 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 cheering 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. ”

“ 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 fancies,
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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase. ”

“ 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.
I bear a burden that might well try
Men that do all by rule ”

“ 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,
With some appropriate commentary on each ”

“ Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old; ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Choose your companions from the best;
Who draws a bucket with the rest
Soon topples down the hill. ”

“ I would be ignorant as the dawn ”

“ These tales belong to the realm of pure lyrical expression. They are mysterious and shadowy, full of infinite subtleties and old wisdom of folklore, and sad with the gray wistful Celtic sadness.
"Lovers of Mr. ”

“ It tells of the difficulty in which two simple Irish folk find themselves when they enter into an agreement with an apparition of the sea, who demands that they knock off his head and who maintains that after they have done that he will knock off theirs. There is a real meaning in the play which it will not take the thoughtful reader long to discover. Besides this there are a number of shorter poems, notably one in which Mr. ”