Responsibilities, and other poems
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RESPONSIBILITIES
[INTRODUCTORY RHYMES]
Pardon, old fathers, if you still remainSomewhere in ear-shot for the story's end,Old Dublin merchant 'free of ten and four'Or trading out of Galway into Spain;And country scholar, Robert Emmet's friend,A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;Traders or soldiers who have left me bloodThat has not passed through any huxter's loin,Pardon, and you that did not weigh the cost,Old Butlers when you took to horse and stoodBeside the brackish waters of the BoyneTill your bad master blenched and all was lost;You merchant skipper that leaped overboardAfter a ragged hat in Biscay Bay,You most of all, silent and fierce old manBecause you were the spectacle that stirredMy fancy, and set my boyish lips to say'Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun';Pardon that for a barren passion's sake,Although I have come close on forty-nineI have no child, I have nothing but a book,Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine.January 1914.THE GREY ROCK
Poets with whom I learned my trade,Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,Here's an old story I've re-made,Imagining 'twould better pleaseYour ears than stories now in fashion,Though you may think I waste my breathPretending that there can be passionThat has more life in it than death,And though at bottling of your wineThe bow-legged Goban had no say;The moral's yours because it's mine.When cups went round at close of day —Is not that how good stories run? —Somewhere within some hollow hill,If books speak truth in Slievenamon,But let that be, the gods were stillAnd sleepy, having had their meal,And smoky torches made a glareOn painted pillars, on a dealOf fiddles and of flutes hung thereBy the ancient holy hands that brought themFrom murmuring Murias, on cups —Old Goban hammered them and wrought them,And put his pattern round their topsTo hold the wine they buy of him.But from the juice that made them wiseAll those had lifted up the dimImaginations of their eyes,For one that was like woman madeBefore their sleepy eyelids ranAnd trembling with her passion said,'Come out and dig for a dead man,Who's burrowing somewhere in the ground,And mock him to his face and thenHollo him on with horse and hound,For he is the worst of all dead men.'We should be dazed and terror struck,If we but saw in dreams that room,Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luckThat emptied all our days to come.I knew a woman none could please,Because she dreamed when but a childOf men and women made like these;And after, when her blood ran wild,Had ravelled her own story out,And said, 'In two or in three yearsI need must marry some poor lout,'And having said it burst in tears.Since, tavern comrades, you have died,Maybe your images have stood,Mere bone and muscle thrown aside,Before that roomful or as good.You had to face your ends when young —'Twas wine or women, or some curse —But never made a poorer songThat you might have a heavier purse,Nor gave loud service to a causeThat you might have a troop of friends.You kept the Muses' sterner laws,And unrepenting faced your ends,And therefore earned the right – and yetDowson and Johnson most I praise —To troop with those the world's forgot,And copy their proud steady gaze.'The Danish troop was driven outBetween the dawn and dusk,' she said;'Although the event was long in doubt,Although the King of Ireland's deadAnd half the kings, before sundownAll was accomplished.''When this dayMurrough, the King of Ireland's son,Foot after foot was giving way,He and his best troops back to backHad perished there, but the Danes ran,Stricken with panic from the attack,The shouting of an unseen man;And being thankful Murrough found,Led by a footsole dipped in bloodThat had made prints upon the ground,Where by old thorn trees that man stood;And though when he gazed here and there,He had but gazed on thorn trees, spoke,"Who is the friend that seems but airAnd yet could give so fine a stroke?"Thereon a young man met his eye,Who said, "Because she held me inHer love, and would not have me die,Rock-nurtured Aoife took a pin,And pushing it into my shirt,Promised that for a pin's sake,No man should see to do me hurt;But there it's gone; I will not takeThe fortune that had been my shameSeeing, King's son, what wounds you have."'Twas roundly spoke, but when night cameHe had betrayed me to his grave,For he and the King's son were dead.I'd promised him two hundred years,And when for all I'd done or said —And these immortal eyes shed tears —He claimed his country's need was most,I'd save his life, yet for the sakeOf a new friend he has turned a ghost.What does he care if my heart break?I call for spade and horse and houndThat we may harry him.' ThereonShe cast herself upon the groundAnd rent her clothes and made her moan:'Why are they faithless when their mightIs from the holy shades that roveThe grey rock and the windy light?Why should the faithfullest heart most loveThe bitter sweetness of false faces?Why must the lasting love what passes,Why are the gods by men betrayed!'But thereon every god stood upWith a slow smile and without sound,And stretching forth his arm and cupTo where she moaned upon the ground,Suddenly drenched her to the skin;And she with Goban's wine adrip,No more remembering what had been,Stared at the gods with laughing lip.I have kept my faith, though faith was tried,To that rock-born, rock-wandering foot,And the world's altered since you died,And I am in no good reputeWith the loud host before the sea,That think sword strokes were better meantThan lover's music – let that be,So that the wandering foot's content.THE TWO KINGS
King Eochaid came at sundown to a woodWestward of Tara. Hurrying to his queenHe had out-ridden his war-wasted menThat with empounded cattle trod the mire;And where beech trees had mixed a pale green lightWith the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a stagWhiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.Because it stood upon his path and seemedMore hands in height than any stag in the worldHe sat with tightened rein and loosened mouthUpon his trembling horse, then drove the spur;But the stag stooped and ran at him, and passed,Rending the horse's flank. King Eochaid reeledThen drew his sword to hold its levelled pointAgainst the stag. When horn and steel were metThe horn resounded as though it had been silver,A sweet, miraculous, terrifying sound.Horn locked in sword, they tugged and struggled thereAs though a stag and unicorn were metIn Africa on Mountain of the Moon,Until at last the double horns, drawn backward,Butted below the single and so piercedThe entrails of the horse. Dropping his swordKing Eochaid seized the horns in his strong handsAnd stared into the sea-green eye, and soHither and thither to and fro they trodTill all the place was beaten into mire.The strong thigh and the agile thigh were met,The hands that gathered up the might of the world,And hoof and horn that had sucked in their speedAmid the elaborate wilderness of the air.Through bush they plunged and over ivied root,And where the stone struck fire, while in the leavesA squirrel whinnied and a bird screamed out;But when at last he forced those sinewy flanksAgainst a beech bole, he threw down the beastAnd knelt above it with drawn knife. On the instantIt vanished like a shadow, and a crySo mournful that it seemed the cry of oneWho had lost some unimaginable treasureWandered between the blue and the green leafAnd climbed into the air, crumbling away,Till all had seemed a shadow or a visionBut for the trodden mire, the pool of blood,The disembowelled horse.King Eochaid ran,Toward peopled Tara, nor stood to draw his breathUntil he came before the painted wall,The posts of polished yew, circled with bronze,Of the great door; but though the hanging lampsShowed their faint light through the unshuttered windows,Nor door, nor mouth, nor slipper made a noise,Nor on the ancient beaten paths, that woundFrom well-side or from plough-land, was there noise;And there had been no sound of living thingBefore him or behind, but that far-offOn the horizon edge bellowed the herds.Knowing that silence brings no good to kings,And mocks returning victory, he passedBetween the pillars with a beating heartAnd saw where in the midst of the great hallPale-faced, alone upon a bench, EdainSat upright with a sword before her feet.Her hands on either side had gripped the bench,Her eyes were cold and steady, her lips tight.Some passion had made her stone. Hearing a footShe started and then knew whose foot it was;But when he thought to take her in his armsShe motioned him afar, and rose and spoke:'I have sent among the fields or to the woodsThe fighting men and servants of this house,For I would have your judgment upon oneWho is self-accused. If she be innocentShe would not look in any known man's faceTill judgment has been given, and if guilty,Will never look again on known man's face.'And at these words he paled, as she had paled,Knowing that he should find upon her lipsThe meaning of that monstrous day.Then she:'You brought me where your brother Ardan satAlways in his one seat, and bid me care himThrough that strange illness that had fixed him there,And should he die to heap his burial moundAnd carve his name in Ogham.' Eochaid said,'He lives?' 'He lives and is a healthy man.''While I have him and you it matters littleWhat man you have lost, what evil you have found.''I bid them make his bed under this roofAnd carried him his food with my own hands,And so the weeks passed by. But when I said"What is this trouble?" he would answer nothing,Though always at my words his trouble grew;And I but asked the more, till he cried out,Weary of many questions: "There are thingsThat make the heart akin to the dumb stone."Then I replied: "Although you hide a secret,Hopeless and dear, or terrible to think on,Speak it, that I may send through the wide worldFor medicine." Thereon he cried aloud:"Day after day you question me, and I,Because there is such a storm amid my thoughtsI shall be carried in the gust, command,Forbid, beseech and waste my breath." Then I,"Although the thing that you have hid were evil,The speaking of it could be no great wrong,And evil must it be, if done 'twere worseThan mound and stone that keep all virtue in,And loosen on us dreams that waste our life,Shadows and shows that can but turn the brain."But finding him still silent I stooped downAnd whispering that none but he should hear,Said: "If a woman has put this on you,My men, whether it please her or displease,And though they have to cross the Loughlan watersAnd take her in the middle of armed men,Shall make her look upon her handiwork,That she may quench the rick she has fired; and thoughShe may have worn silk clothes, or worn a crown,She'll not be proud, knowing within her heartThat our sufficient portion of the worldIs that we give, although it be brief giving,Happiness to children and to men."Then he, driven by his thought beyond his thought,And speaking what he would not though he would,Sighed: "You, even you yourself, could work the cure!"And at those words I rose and I went outAnd for nine days he had food from other hands,And for nine days my mind went whirling roundThe one disastrous zodiac, mutteringThat the immedicable mound's beyondOur questioning, beyond our pity even.But when nine days had gone I stood againBefore his chair and bending down my headTold him, that when Orion rose, and allThe women of his household were asleep,To go – for hope would give his limbs the power —To an old empty woodman's house that's hiddenClose to a clump of beech trees in the woodWestward of Tara, there to await a friendThat could, as he had told her, work his cureAnd would be no harsh friend.When night had deepened,I groped my way through boughs, and over roots,Till oak and hazel ceased and beech began,And found the house, a sputtering torch within,And stretched out sleeping on a pile of skinsArdan, and though I called to him and triedTo shake him out of sleep, I could not rouse him.I waited till the night was on the turn,Then fearing that some labourer, on his wayTo plough or pasture-land, might see me there,Went out.Among the ivy-covered rocks,As on the blue light of a sword, a manWho had unnatural majesty, and eyesLike the eyes of some great kite scouring the woods,Stood on my path. Trembling from head to footI gazed at him like grouse upon a kite;But with a voice that had unnatural music,"A weary wooing and a long," he said,"Speaking of love through other lips and lookingUnder the eyelids of another, for it was my craftThat put a passion in the sleeper there,And when I had got my will and drawn you here,Where I may speak to you alone, my craftSucked up the passion out of him againAnd left mere sleep. He'll wake when the sun wakes,Push out his vigorous limbs and rub his eyes,And wonder what has ailed him these twelve months."I cowered back upon the wall in terror,But that sweet-sounding voice ran on: "Woman,I was your husband when you rode the air,Danced in the whirling foam and in the dust,In days you have not kept in memory,Being betrayed into a cradle, and I comeThat I may claim you as my wife again."I was no longer terrified, his voiceHad half awakened some old memory,Yet answered him: "I am King Eochaid's wifeAnd with him have found every happinessWomen can find." With a most masterful voice,That made the body seem as it were a stringUnder a bow, he cried: "What happinessCan lovers have that know their happinessMust end at the dumb stone? But where we buildOur sudden palaces in the still airPleasure itself can bring no weariness,Nor can time waste the cheek, nor is there footThat has grown weary of the whirling dance,Nor an unlaughing mouth, but mine that mourns,Among those mouths that sing their sweethearts' praise,Your empty bed." "How should I love," I answered,"Were it not that when the dawn has lit my bedAnd shown my husband sleeping there, I have sighed,'Your strength and nobleness will pass away.'Or how should love be worth its pains were it notThat when he has fallen asleep within my arms,Being wearied out, I love in man the child?What can they know of love that do not knowShe builds her nest upon a narrow ledgeAbove a windy precipice?" Then he:"Seeing that when you come to the death-bedYou must return, whether you would or no,This human life blotted from memory,Why must I live some thirty, forty years,Alone with all this useless happiness?"Thereon he seized me in his arms, but IThrust him away with both my hands and cried,"Never will I believe there is any changeCan blot out of my memory this lifeSweetened by death, but if I could believeThat were a double hunger in my lipsFor what is doubly brief."And now the shape,My hands were pressed to, vanished suddenly.I staggered, but a beech tree stayed my fall,And clinging to it I could hear the cocksCrow upon Tara.'King Eochaid bowed his headAnd thanked her for her kindness to his brother,For that she promised, and for that refused.Thereon the bellowing of the empounded herdsRose round the walls, and through the bronze-ringed doorJostled and shouted those war-wasted men,And in the midst King Eochaid's brother stood.He'd heard that din on the horizon's edgeAnd ridden towards it, being ignorant.TO A WEALTHY MAN WHO PROMISED A SECOND SUBSCRIPTION TO THE DUBLIN MUNICIPAL GALLERY IF IT WERE PROVED THE PEOPLE WANTED PICTURES
You gave but will not give againUntil enough of Paudeen's penceBy Biddy's halfpennies have lainTo be 'some sort of evidence,'Before you'll put your guineas down,That things it were a pride to giveAre what the blind and ignorant townImagines best to make it thrive.What cared Duke Ercole, that bidHis mummers to the market place,What th' onion-sellers thought or didSo that his Plautus set the paceFor the Italian comedies?And Guidobaldo, when he madeThat grammar school of courtesiesWhere wit and beauty learned their tradeUpon Urbino's windy hill,Had sent no runners to and froThat he might learn the shepherds' will.And when they drove out Cosimo,Indifferent how the rancour ran,He gave the hours they had set freeTo Michelozzo's latest planFor the San Marco Library,Whence turbulent Italy should drawDelight in Art whose end is peace,In logic and in natural lawBy sucking at the dugs of Greece.Your open hand but shows our loss,For he knew better how to live.Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss,Look up in the sun's eye and giveWhat the exultant heart calls goodThat some new day may breed the bestBecause you gave, not what they wouldBut the right twigs for an eagle's nest!December 1912.SEPTEMBER 1913
What need you, being come to sense,But fumble in a greasy tillAnd add the halfpence to the penceAnd prayer to shivering prayer, untilYou have dried the marrow from the bone;For men were born to pray and save:Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,It's with O'Leary in the grave.Yet they were of a different kindThe names that stilled your childish play,They have gone about the world like wind,But little time had they to prayFor whom the hangman's rope was spun,And what, God help us, could they save:Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,It's with O'Leary in the grave.Was it for this the wild geese spreadThe grey wing upon every tide;For this that all that blood was shed,For this Edward Fitzgerald died,And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,All that delirium of the brave;Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,It's with O'Leary in the grave.Yet could we turn the years again,And call those exiles as they were,In all their loneliness and painYou'd cry 'some woman's yellow hairHas maddened every mother's son':They weighed so lightly what they gave,But let them be, they're dead and gone,They're with O'Leary in the grave.TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO NOTHING
Now all the truth is out,Be secret and take defeatFrom any brazen throat,For how can you compete,Being honour bred, with oneWho, were it proved he lies,Were neither shamed in his ownNor in his neighbours' eyes?Bred to a harder thingThan Triumph, turn awayAnd like a laughing stringWhereon mad fingers playAmid a place of stone,Be secret and exult,Because of all things knownThat is most difficult.PAUDEEN
Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spiteOf our old Paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blindAmong the stones and thorn trees, under morning light;Until a curlew cried and in the luminous windA curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thoughtThat on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,A single soul that lacks a sweet crystaline cry.TO A SHADE
If you have revisited the town, thin Shade,Whether to look upon your monument(I wonder if the builder has been paid)Or happier thoughted when the day is spentTo drink of that salt breath out of the seaWhen grey gulls flit about instead of men,And the gaunt houses put on majesty:Let these content you and be gone again;For they are at their old tricks yet.A manOf your own passionate serving kind who had broughtIn his full hands what, had they only known,Had given their children's children loftier thought,Sweeter emotion, working in their veinsLike gentle blood, has been driven from the place,And insult heaped upon him for his painsAnd for his open-handedness, disgrace;An old foul mouth that slandered you had setThe pack upon him.Go, unquiet wanderer,And gather the Glasnevin coverletAbout your head till the dust stops your ear,The time for you to taste of that salt breathAnd listen at the corners has not come;You had enough of sorrow before death —Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.September 29th, 1914.WHEN HELEN LIVED
We have cried in our despairThat men desert,For some trivial affairOr noisy, insolent sport,Beauty that we have wonFrom bitterest hours;Yet we, had we walked withinThose topless towersWhere Helen walked with her boy,Had given but as the restOf the men and women of Troy,A word and a jest.THE ATTACK ON 'THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD,' 1907
Once, when midnight smote the air,Eunuchs ran through Hell and metFrom thoroughfare to thoroughfare,While that great Juan galloped by;And like these to rail and sweatStaring upon his sinewy thigh.THE THREE BEGGARS
'Though to my feathers in the wet,I have stood here from break of day,I have not found a thing to eatFor only rubbish comes my way.Am I to live on lebeen-lone?'Muttered the old crane of Gort.'For all my pains on lebeen-lone.'King Guari walked amid his courtThe palace-yard and river-sideAnd there to three old beggars said:'You that have wandered far and wideCan ravel out what's in my head.Do men who least desire get most,Or get the most who most desire?'A beggar said: 'They get the mostWhom man or devil cannot tire,And what could make their muscles tautUnless desire had made them so.'But Guari laughed with secret thought,'If that be true as it seems true,One of you three is a rich man,For he shall have a thousand poundsWho is first asleep, if but he canSleep before the third noon sounds.'And thereon merry as a bird,With his old thoughts King Guari wentFrom river-side and palace-yardAnd left them to their argument.'And if I win,' one beggar said,'Though I am old I shall persuadeA pretty girl to share my bed';The second: 'I shall learn a trade';The third: 'I'll hurry to the courseAmong the other gentlemen,And lay it all upon a horse';The second: 'I have thought again:A farmer has more dignity.'One to another sighed and cried:The exorbitant dreams of beggary,That idleness had borne to pride,Sang through their teeth from noon to noon;And when the second twilight broughtThe frenzy of the beggars' moonThey closed their blood-shot eyes for naught.One beggar cried: 'You're shamming sleep.'And thereupon their anger grewTill they were whirling in a heap.They'd mauled and bitten the night throughOr sat upon their heels to rail,And when old Guari came and stoodBefore the three to end this tale,They were commingling lice and blood.'Time's up,' he cried, and all the threeWith blood-shot eyes upon him stared.'Time's up,' he cried, and all the threeFell down upon the dust and snored.'Maybe I shall be lucky yet,Now they are silent,' said the crane.'Though to my feathers in the wetI've stood as I were made of stoneAnd seen the rubbish run about,It's certain there are trout somewhereAnd maybe I shall take a troutIf but I do not seem to care.'THE THREE HERMITS
Three old hermits took the airBy a cold and desolate sea,First was muttering a prayer,Second rummaged for a flea;On a windy stone, the third,Giddy with his hundredth year,Sang unnoticed like a bird.'Though the Door of Death is nearAnd what waits behind the door,Three times in a single dayI, though upright on the shore,Fall asleep when I should pray.'So the first but now the second,'We're but given what we have earnedWhen all thoughts and deeds are reckoned,So it's plain to be discernedThat the shades of holy men,Who have failed being weak of will,Pass the Door of Birth again,And are plagued by crowds, untilThey've the passion to escape.'Moaned the other, 'They are thrownInto some most fearful shape.'But the second mocked his moan:'They are not changed to anything,Having loved God once, but maybe,To a poet or a kingOr a witty lovely lady.'While he'd rummaged rags and hair,Caught and cracked his flea, the third,Giddy with his hundredth yearSang unnoticed like a bird.BEGGAR TO BEGGAR CRIED
'Time to put off the world and go somewhereAnd find my health again in the sea air,'Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,'And make my soul before my pate is bare.''And get a comfortable wife and houseTo rid me of the devil in my shoes,'Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,'And the worse devil that is between my thighs.''And though I'd marry with a comely lass,She need not be too comely – let it pass,'Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,'But there's a devil in a looking-glass.''Nor should she be too rich, because the richAre driven by wealth as beggars by the itch,'Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,'And cannot have a humorous happy speech.''And there I'll grow respected at my ease,And hear amid the garden's nightly peace,'Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,'The wind-blown clamor of the barnacle-geese.'