The Wild Swans at Coole
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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.
THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE
The trees are in their autumn beauty,The woodland paths are dry,Under the October twilight the waterMirrors a still sky;Upon the brimming water among the stonesAre nine and fifty swans.The nineteenth Autumn has come upon meSince I first made my count;I saw, before I had well finished,All suddenly mountAnd scatter wheeling in great broken ringsUpon 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 waterMysterious, beautiful;Among what rushes will they build,By what lake's edge or poolDelight men's eyes, when I awake some dayTo find they have flown away?IN MEMORY OF
MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY
1Now that we're almost settled in our houseI'll name the friends that cannot sup with usBeside a fire of turf in the ancient tower,And having talked to some late hourClimb up the narrow winding stair to bed:Discoverers of forgotten truthOr mere companions of my youth,All, all are in my thoughts to-night, being dead.2Always 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 smartIn the affections of our heart,And quarrels are blown up upon that head;But not a friend that I would bringThis night can set us quarrelling,For all that come into my mind are dead.3Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind,That loved his learning better than mankind,Though courteous to the worst; much falling heBrooded upon sanctityTill all his Greek and Latin learning seemedA long blast upon the horn that broughtA little nearer to his thoughtA measureless consummation that he dreamed.4And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,That dying chose the living world for textAnd never could have rested in the tombBut that, long travelling, he had comeTowards nightfall upon certain set apartIn a most desolate stony place,Towards nightfall upon a racePassionate and simple like his heart.5And then I think of old George Pollexfen,In muscular youth well known to Mayo menFor horsemanship at meets or at race-courses,That could have shown how purebred horsesAnd solid men, for all their passion, liveBut as the outrageous stars inclineBy opposition, square and trine;Having grown sluggish and contemplative.6They were my close companions many a year,A portion of my mind and life, as it were,And now their breathless faces seem to lookOut of some old picture-book;I am accustomed to their lack of breath,But not that my dear friend's dear son,Our Sidney and our perfect man,Could share in that discourtesy of death.7For all things the delighted eye now seesWere loved by him; the old storm-broken treesThat cast their shadows upon road and bridge;The tower set on the stream's edge;The ford where drinking cattle make a stirNightly, and startled by that soundThe water-hen must change her ground;He might have been your heartiest welcomer.8When with the Galway foxhounds he would rideFrom Castle Taylor to the Roxborough sideOr Esserkelly plain, few kept his pace;At Mooneen he had leaped a placeSo perilous that half the astonished meetHad shut their eyes, and where was itHe rode a race without a bit?And yet his mind outran the horses' feet.9We dreamed that a great painter had been bornTo cold Clare rock and Galway rock and thorn,To that stern colour and that delicate lineThat are our secret disciplineWherein the gazing heart doubles her might.Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,And yet he had the intensityTo have published all to be a world's delight.10What other could so well have counselled usIn all lovely intricacies of a houseAs he that practised or that understoodAll work in metal or in wood,In moulded plaster or in carven stone?Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,And all he did done perfectlyAs though he had but that one trade alone.11Some burn damp fagots, others may consumeThe entire combustible world in one small roomAs though dried straw, and if we turn aboutThe bare chimney is gone black outBecause 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?12I had thought, seeing how bitter is that windThat shakes the shutter, to have brought to mindAll those that manhood tried, or childhood loved,Or boyish intellect approved,With some appropriate commentary on each;Until imagination broughtA fitter welcome; but a thoughtOf that late death took all my heart for speech.AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES
HIS DEATH
I know that I shall meet my fateSomewhere among the clouds above;Those that I fight I do not hateThose that I guard I do not love;My country is Kiltartan Cross,My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,No likely end could bring them lossOr leave them happier than before.Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,Nor public man, nor angry crowds,A lonely impulse of delightDrove 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 behindIn balance with this life, this death.MEN IMPROVE WITH THE
YEARS
I am worn out with dreams;A weather-worn, marble tritonAmong the streams;And all day long I lookUpon this lady's beautyAs though I had found in bookA pictured beauty,Pleased to have filled the eyesOr the discerning ears,Delighted to be but wise,For men improve with the years;And yet and yetIs this my dream, or the truth?O would that we had metWhen I had my burning youth;But I grow old among dreams,A weather-worn, marble tritonAmong the streams.THE COLLAR-BONE OF A
HARE
Would I could cast a sail on the waterWhere many a king has goneAnd 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 isTo change my loves while dancingAnd pay but a kiss for a kiss.I would find by the edge of that waterThe collar-bone of a hareWorn thin by the lapping of water,And pierce it through with a gimlet and stareAt the old bitter world where they marry in churches,And laugh over the untroubled waterAt all who marry in churches,Through the white thin bone of a hare.UNDER THE ROUND TOWER
'Although I'd lie lapped up in linenA deal I'd sweat and little earnIf I should live as live the neighbours,'Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne;'Stretch bones till the daylight comeOn great-grandfather's battered tomb.'Upon a grey old battered tombstoneIn Glendalough beside the stream,Where the O'Byrnes and Byrnes are buried,He stretched his bones and fell in a dreamOf sun and moon that a good hourBellowed 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 upUntil they pranced upon the top.That golden king and that wild ladySang till stars began to fade,Hands gripped in hands, toes close together,Hair spread on the wind they made;That lady and that golden kingCould 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 pocketAnd snug it in a feather-bed,I cannot find the peace of homeOn great-grandfather's battered tomb.'SOLOMON TO SHEBA
Sang Solomon to Sheba,And kissed her dusky face,'All day long from mid-dayWe have talked in the one place,All day long from shadowless noonWe have gone round and roundIn the narrow theme of loveLike an old horse in a pound.'To Solomon sang Sheba,Planted on his knees,'If you had broached a matterThat might the learned please,You had before the sun had thrownOur shadows on the groundDiscovered 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 womanBorn under the skiesDare match in learning with us two,And all day long we have foundThere's not a thing but love can makeThe 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 mouldIn bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,Appears, and when we have gone is gone again,Being more indifferent to our solitudeThan '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 neededYouth to prolongThan dumb-bell and foilTo keep the body young.Oh, who could have foretoldThat the heart grows old?Though I have many words,What woman's satisfied,I am no longer faintBecause at her side?Oh, who could have foretoldThat the heart grows old?I have not lost desireBut the heart that I had,I thought 'twould burn my bodyLaid on the death-bed.But who could have foretoldThat the heart grows old?TO A YOUNG BEAUTY
Dear fellow-artist, why so freeWith every sort of company,With every Jack and Jill?Choose your companions from the best;Who draws a bucket with the restSoon topples down the hill.You may, that mirror for a school,Be passionate, not bountifulAs common beauties may,Who were not born to keep in trimWith old Ezekiel's cherubimBut 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 endWith Landor and with Donne.TO A YOUNG GIRL
My dear, my dear, I knowMore than anotherWhat makes your heart beat so;Not even your own motherCan know it as I know,Who broke my heart for herWhen the wild thought,That she deniesAnd has forgot,Set all her blood astirAnd glittered in her eyes.THE SCHOLARS
Bald heads forgetful of their sins,Old, learned, respectable bald headsEdit and annotate the linesThat young men, tossing on their beds,Rhymed out in love's despairTo flatter beauty's ignorant ear.They'll cough in the ink to the world's end;Wear out the carpet with their shoesEarning respect; have no strange friend;If they have sinned nobody knows.Lord, what would they sayShould their Catullus walk that way?TOM O'ROUGHLEY
'Though logic choppers rule the town,And every man and maid and boyHas marked a distant object down,An aimless joy is a pure joy,'Or so did Tom O'Roughley sayThat saw the surges running by,'And wisdom is a butterflyAnd not a gloomy bird of prey.'If little planned is little sinnedBut little need the grave distress.What's dying but a second wind?How but in zigzag wantonnessCould trumpeter Michael be so brave?'Or something of that sort he said,'And if my dearest friend were deadI'd dance a measure on his grave.'THE SAD SHEPHERD
ShepherdThat cry's from the first cuckoo of the yearI wished before it ceased.GoatherdNor bird nor beastCould 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 metWhere my goats browse on the scarce grass or leapFrom stone to stone.ShepherdI am looking for strayed sheep;Something has troubled me and in my troubleI let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,For rhyme can beat a measure out of troubleAnd make the daylight sweet once more; but whenI had driven every rhyme into its placeThe sheep had gone from theirs.GoatherdI know right wellWhat turned so good a shepherd from his charge.ShepherdHe that was best in every country sportAnd every country craft, and of us allMost courteous to slow age and hasty youthIs dead.GoatherdThe boy that brings my griddle cakeBrought the bare news.ShepherdHe had thrown the crook awayAnd died in the great war beyond the sea.GoatherdHe had often played his pipes among my hillsAnd when he played it was their loneliness,The exultation of their stone, that criedUnder his fingers.ShepherdI had it from his mother,And his own flock was browsing at the door.GoatherdHow does she bear her grief? There is not a shepherdBut grows more gentle when he speaks her name,Remembering kindness done, and how can I,That found when I had neither goat nor grazingNew welcome and old wisdom at her fireTill winter blasts were gone, but speak of herEven before his children and his wife.ShepherdShe goes about her house erect and calmBetween the pantry and the linen chest,Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooksHer labouring men, as though her darling livedBut for her grandson now; there is no changeBut such as I have seen upon her faceWatching our shepherd sports at harvest-timeWhen her son's turn was over.GoatherdSing your song,I too have rhymed my reveries, but youthIs hot to show whatever it has foundAnd till that's done can neither work nor wait.Old goatherds and old goats, if in all elseYouth can excel them in accomplishment,Are learned in waiting.ShepherdYou cannot but have seenThat he alone had gathered up no gear,Set carpenters to work on no wide table,On no long bench nor lofty milking shedAs others will, when first they take possession,But left the house as in his father's timeAs though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo,No settled man. And now that he is goneThere's nothing of him left but half a scoreOf sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes.GoatherdYou have put the thought in rhyme.ShepherdI worked all dayAnd when 'twas done so little had I doneThat maybe 'I am sorry' in plain proseHad sounded better to your mountain fancy.[He sings.'Like the speckled bird that steersThousands of leagues oversea,And runs for a while or a while half-fliesUpon his yellow legs through our meadows,He stayed for a while; and weHad scarcely accustomed our earsTo his speech at the break of day,Had scarcely accustomed our eyesTo 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 dayI heard him first, but man is a fool.'GoatherdYou sing as always of the natural life,And I that made like music in my youthHearing it now have sighed for that young manAnd certain lost companions of my own.ShepherdThey say that on your barren mountain ridgeYou have measured out the road that the soul treadsWhen it has vanished from our natural eyes;That you have talked with apparitions.GoatherdIndeedMy daily thoughts since the first stupor of youthHave found the path my goats' feet cannot find.ShepherdSing, for it may be that your thoughts have pluckedSome medicable herb to make our griefLess bitter.GoatherdThey have brought me from that ridgeSeed pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy.[Sings.'He grows younger every secondThat were all his birthdays reckonedMuch too solemn seemed;Because of what he had dreamed,Or the ambitions that he served,Much too solemn and reserved.Jaunting, journeyingTo his own dayspring,He unpacks the loaded pernOf all 'twas pain or joy to learn,Of all that he had made.The outrageous war shall fade;1At some old winding whitethorn rootHe'll practice on the shepherd's flute,Or on the close-cropped grassCourt his shepherd lass,Or run where lads reform our day-timeTill that is their long shouting play-time;Knowledge he shall unwindThrough victories of the mind,Till, clambering at the cradle side,He dreams himself his mother's pride,All knowledge lost in tranceOf sweeter ignorance.'ShepherdWhen I have shut these ewes and this old ramInto the fold, we'll to the woods and thereCut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn barkBut put no name and leave them at her door.To know the mountain and the valley grieveMay 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 onThe round green eyes and the long wavering bodiesOf 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.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 yearsI must endure the timid sun.THE DAWN
I would be ignorant as the dawnThat has looked downOn that old queen measuring a townWith the pin of a brooch,Or on the withered men that sawFrom their pedantic BabylonThe 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 dawnThat merely stood, rocking the glittering coachAbove 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 womanThat gives up all her mind,A man may find in no manA friendship of her kindThat covers all he has broughtAs with her flesh and bone,Nor quarrels with a thoughtBecause it is not her own.Though pedantry deniesIt's plain the Bible meansThat Solomon grew wiseWhile talking with his queens.Yet never could, althoughThey say he counted grass,Count all the praises dueWhen Sheba was his lass,When she the iron wrought, orWhen from the smithy fireIt shuddered in the water:Harshness of their desireThat made them stretch and yawn,Pleasure that comes with sleep,Shudder that made them one.What else He give or keepGod grant me – no, not here,For I am not so boldTo hope a thing so dearNow I am growing old,But when if the tale's trueThe Pestle of the moonThat pounds up all anewBrings me to birth again —To find what once I hadAnd know what once I have known,Until I am driven mad,Sleep driven from my bed,By tenderness and care,Pity, an aching head,Gnashing of teeth, despair;And all because of some onePerverse creature of chance,And live like SolomonThat Sheba led a dance.THE FISHERMAN
Although I can see him still,The freckled man who goesTo a grey place on a hillIn grey Connemara clothesAt dawn to cast his flies,It's long since I beganTo call up to the eyesThis wise and simple man.All day I'd looked in the faceWhat I had hoped 'twould beTo write for my own raceAnd 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 bookWho has won a drunken cheer,The witty man and his jokeAimed at the commonest ear,The clever man who criesThe catch-cries of the clown,The beating down of the wiseAnd great Art beaten down.Maybe a twelvemonth sinceSuddenly I began,In scorn of this audience,Imagining a manAnd his sun-freckled face,And grey Connemara cloth,Climbing up to a placeWhere stone is dark under froth,And the down turn of his wristWhen the flies drop in the stream:A man who does not exist,A man who is but a dream;And cried, 'Before I am oldI shall have written him onePoem maybe as coldAnd passionate as the dawn.'THE HAWK
'Call down the hawk from the air;Let him be hooded or cagedTill 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,Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,Now I have learnt to be proudHovering over the woodIn the broken mistOr tumbling cloud.''What tumbling cloud did you cleave,Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,Last evening? that I, who had satDumbfounded before a knave,Should give to my friendA pretence of wit.'MEMORY
One had a lovely face,And two or three had charm,But charm and face were in vainBecause the mountain grassCannot but keep the formWhere 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 downAs a man does who has published a new bookOr a young girl dressed out in her new gown,And though I have turned the talk by hook or crookUntil her praise should be the uppermost theme,A woman spoke of some new tale she had read,A man confusedly in a half dreamAs 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 warBut walk by the dry thorn until I have foundSome beggar sheltering from the wind, and thereManage the talk until her name come round.If there be rags enough he will know her nameAnd 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 lostBetween 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 litIn 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 UrbinoTo where the duchess and her people talkedThe stately midnight through until they stoodIn their great window looking at the dawn;I might have had no friend that could not mixCourtesy and passion into one like thoseThat saw the wicks grow yellow in the dawn;I might have used the one substantial rightMy trade allows: chosen my company,And chosen what scenery had pleased me best.'Thereon my phoenix answered in reproof,'The drunkards, pilferers of public funds,All the dishonest crowd I had driven away,When my luck changed and they dared meet my face,Crawled from obscurity, and set upon meThose I had served and some that I had fed;Yet never have I, now nor any time,Complained of the people.'All I could replyWas: 'You, that have not lived in thought but deed,Can have the purity of a natural force,But I, whose virtues are the definitionsOf the analytic mind, can neither closeThe eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.'And yet, because my heart leaped at her words,I was abashed, and now they come to mindAfter nine years, I sink my head abashed.HIS PHOENIX
There is a queen in China, or maybe it's in Spain,And birthdays and holidays such praises can be heardOf 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 payAnd smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind:I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.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 cloakAnd flings herself out of the room when Juliet would be brideWith 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.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.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 wildWho 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.