William Butler Yeats The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 1 of 8. Poems Lyrical and Narrative
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BOOK II THE WANDERINGS OF OISIN
Now, man of croziers, shadows called our names And then away, away, like whirling flames; And now fled by, mist-covered, without sound, The youth and lady and the deer and hound; ‘Gaze no more on the phantoms,’ Niamh said, And kissed my eyes, and, swaying her bright head And her bright body, sang of faery and man Before God was or my old line began; Wars shadowy, vast, exultant; faeries of old Who wedded men with rings of Druid gold; And how those lovers never turn their eyes Upon the life that fades and flickers and dies, But love and kiss on dim shores far away Rolled round with music of the sighing spray: But sang no more, as when, like a brown bee That has drunk full, she crossed the misty sea With me in her white arms a hundred years Before this day; for now the fall of tears Troubled her song.
I do not know if days Or hours passed by, yet hold the morning rays Shone many times among the glimmering flowers Wove in her flower-like hair, before dark towers Rose in the darkness, and the white surf gleamed About them; and the horse of faery screamed And shivered, knowing the Isle of many Fears, Nor ceased until white Niamh stroked his ears And named him by sweet names.
A foaming tide Whitened afar with surge, fan-formed and wide, Burst from a great door marred by many a blow From mace and sword and pole-axe, long ago When gods and giants warred. We rode between The seaweed-covered pillars, and the green And surging phosphorus alone gave light On our dark pathway, till a countless flight Of moonlit steps glimmered; and left and right Dark statues glimmered over the pale tide Upon dark thrones. Between the lids of one The imaged meteors had flashed and run And had disported in the stilly jet, And the fixed stars had dawned and shone and set, Since God made Time and Death and Sleep: the other Stretched his long arm to where, a misty smother, The stream churned, churned, and churned – his lips apart, As though he told his never slumbering heart Of every foamdrop on its misty way: Tying the horse to his vast foot that lay Half in the unvesselled sea, we climbed the stairs And climbed so long, I thought the last steps were Hung from the morning star; when these mild words Fanned the delighted air like wings of birds: ‘My brothers spring out of their beds at morn, A-murmur like young partridge: with loud horn They chase the noon-tide deer; And when the dew-drowned stars hang in the air Look to long fishing-lines, or point and pare A larch-wood hunting spear.
‘O sigh, O fluttering sigh, be kind to me; Flutter along the froth lips of the sea, And shores the froth lips wet: And stay a little while, and bid them weep: Ah, touch their blue veined eyelids if they sleep, And shake their coverlet.
‘When you have told how I weep endlessly, Flutter along the froth lips of the sea And home to me again, And in the shadow of my hair lie hid, And tell me how you came to one unbid, The saddest of all men.’
A maiden with soft eyes like funeral tapers, And face that seemed wrought out of moonlit vapours, And a sad mouth, that fear made tremulous As any ruddy moth, looked down on us; And she with a wave-rusted chain was tied To two old eagles, full of ancient pride, That with dim eyeballs stood on either side. Few feathers were on their dishevelled wings, For their dim minds were with the ancient things.
‘I bring deliverance,’ pearl-pale Niamh said.
‘Neither the living, nor the unlabouring dead, Nor the high gods who never lived, may fight My enemy and hope; demons for fright Jabber and scream about him in the night; For he is strong and crafty as the seas That sprang under the Seven Hazel Trees. And I must needs endure and hate and weep, Until the gods and demons drop asleep, Hearing Aed touch the mournful strings of gold.’
‘Is he so dreadful?’
‘Be not over-bold, But flee while you may flee from him.’
Then I: ‘This demon shall be pierced and drop and die, And his loose bulk be thrown in the loud tide.’
‘Flee from him,’ pearl-pale Niamh weeping cried, ‘For all men flee the demons’; but moved not, Nor shook my firm and spacious soul one jot; There was no mightier soul of Heber’s line; Now it is old and mouse-like: for a sign I burst the chain: still earless, nerveless, blind, Wrapped in the things of the unhuman mind, In some dim memory or ancient mood Still earless, nerveless, blind, the eagles stood.
And then we climbed the stair to a high door, A hundred horsemen on the basalt floor Beneath had paced content: we held our way And stood within: clothed in a misty ray I saw a foam-white seagull drift and float Under the roof, and with a straining throat Shouted, and hailed him: he hung there a star, For no man’s cry shall ever mount so far; Not even your God could have thrown down that hall; Stabling His unloosed lightnings in their stall, He had sat down and sighed with cumbered heart, As though His hour were come.
We sought the part That was most distant from the door; green slime Made the way slippery, and time on time Showed prints of sea-born scales, while down through it The captives’ journeys to and fro were writ Like a small river, and, where feet touched, came A momentary gleam of phosphorus flame. Under the deepest shadows of the hall That maiden found a ring hung on the wall, And in the ring a torch, and with its flare Making a world about her in the air, Passed under a dim doorway, out of sight, And came again, holding a second light Burning between her fingers, and in mine Laid it and sighed: I held a sword whose shine No centuries could dim: and a word ran Thereon in Ogham letters, ‘Mananan’: That sea-god’s name, who in a deep content Sprang dripping, and, with captive demons sent Out of the seven-fold seas, built the dark hall Rooted in foam and clouds, and cried to all The mightier masters of a mightier race; And at his cry there came no milk-pale face Under a crown of thorns and dark with blood, But only exultant faces.
Niamh stood With bowed head, trembling when the white blade shone, But she whose hours of tenderness were gone Had neither hope nor fear. I bade them hide Under the shadows till the tumults died Of the loud crashing and earth-shaking fight, Lest they should look upon some dreadful sight; And thrust the torch between the slimy flags. A dome made out of endless carven jags, Where shadowy face flowed into shadowy face, Looked down on me; and in the self-same place I waited hour by hour, and the high dome Windowless, pillarless, multitudinous home Of faces, waited; and the leisured gaze Was loaded with the memory of days Buried and mighty: when through the great door The dawn came in, and glimmered on the floor With a pale light, I journeyed round the hall And found a door deep sunken in the wall, The least of doors; beyond on a dim plain A little runnel made a bubbling strain, And on the runnel’s stony and bare edge A dusky demon dry as a withered sedge Swayed, crooning to himself an unknown tongue: In a sad revelry he sang and swung Bacchant and mournful, passing to and fro His hand along the runnel’s side, as though The flowers still grew there: far on the sea’s waste; Shaking and waving, vapour vapour chased, While high frail cloudlets, fed with a green light, Like drifts of leaves, immovable and bright, Hung in the passionate dawn. He slowly turned: A demon’s leisure: eyes, first white, now burned Like wings of kingfishers; and he arose Barking. We trampled up and down with blows Of sword and brazen battle-axe, while day Gave to high noon and noon to night gave way; But when at withering of the sun he knew The Druid sword of Mananan, he grew To many shapes; I lunged at the smooth throat Of a great eel; it changed, and I but smote A fir-tree roaring in its leafless top; And I but held a corpse, with livid chop And dripping and sunken shape, to face and breast, When I tore down that tree; but when the west Surged up in plumy fire, I lunged and drave Through heart and spine, and cast him in the wave, Lest Niamh shudder.
Full of hope and dread Those two came carrying wine and meat and bread, And healed my wounds with unguents out of flowers, That feed white moths by some De Danaan shrine; Then in that hall, lit by the dim sea-shine, We lay on skins of otters, and drank wine, Brewed by the sea-gods, from huge cups that lay Upon the lips of sea-gods in their day; And then on heaped-up skins of otters slept. But when the sun once more in saffron stept, Rolling his flagrant wheel out of the deep, We sang the loves and angers without sleep, And all the exultant labours of the strong:
But now the lying clerics murder song With barren words and flatteries of the weak. In what land do the powerless turn the beak Of ravening Sorrow, or the hand of Wrath? For all your croziers, they have left the path And wander in the storms and clinging snows, Hopeless for ever: ancient Oisin knows, For he is weak and poor and blind, and lies On the anvil of the world.
S. PATRIC
Be still: the skies Are choked with thunder, lightning, and fierce wind, For God has heard, and speaks His angry mind; Go cast your body on the stones and pray, For He has wrought midnight and dawn and day.
OISIN
Saint, do you weep? I hear amid the thunder The Fenian horses; armour torn asunder; Laughter and cries: the armies clash and shock; All is done now; I see the ravens flock; Ah, cease, you mournful, laughing Fenian horn!
We feasted for three days. On the fourth morn I found, dropping sea-foam on the wide stair, And hung with slime, and whispering in his hair, That demon dull and unsubduable; And once more to a day-long battle fell, And at the sundown threw him in the surge, To lie until the fourth morn saw emerge His new healed shape: and for a hundred years So warred, so feasted, with nor dreams, nor fears Nor languor nor fatigue: an endless feast, An endless war.
The hundred years had ceased; I stood upon the stair: the surges bore A beech bough to me, and my heart grew sore, Remembering how I stood by white-haired Finn While the woodpecker made a merry din, The hare leaped in the grass.
Young Niamh came Holding that horse, and sadly called my name; I mounted, and we passed over the lone And drifting grayness, while this monotone, Surly and distant, mixed inseparably Into the clangour of the wind and sea:
‘I hear my soul drop down into decay, And Mananan’s dark tower, stone by stone, Gather sea-slime and fall the seaward way, And the moon goad the waters night and day, That all be overthrown.
‘But till the moon has taken all, I wage War on the mightiest men under the skies, And they have fallen or fled, age after age: Light is man’s love, and lighter is man’s rage; His purpose drifts and dies.’
And then lost Niamh murmured, ‘Love, we go To the Island of Forgetfulness, for lo! The Islands of Dancing and of Victories Are empty of all power.’
‘And which of these Is the Island of Content?’
‘None know,’ she said; And on my bosom laid her weeping head.
BOOK III THE WANDERINGS OF OISIN
Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke, High as the saddle girth, covering away from our glances the tide; And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance broke; The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.
I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair, And never a song sang Niamh, and over my finger-tips Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold air, And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.
Were we days long or hours long in riding, when rolled in a grisly peace, An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak? And we stood on a sea’s edge we saw not; for whiter than new-washed fleece Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke.
And we rode on the plains of the sea’s edge; the sea’s edge barren and gray, Gray sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees, Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.
But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling bark; Dropping; a murmurous dropping; old silence and that one sound; For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark: Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.
And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night, For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world and the sun, Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light, And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one.
Till the horse gave a whinny; for, cumbrous with stems of the hazel and oak, A valley flowed down from his hoofs, and there in the long grass lay, Under the starlight and shadow, a monstrous slumbering folk, Their naked and gleaming bodies poured out and heaped in the way.
And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and blade; And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years old Could sleep on a bed of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid, And more comely than man can make them with bronze and silver and gold.
And each of the huge white creatures was huger than four-score men; The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands were the claws of birds, And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of the mural glen, The breathing came from those bodies, long-warless, grown whiter than curds.
The wood was so spacious above them, that He who had stars for His flocks Could fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His dew-cumbered skies; So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nests in their locks, Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes.
And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and came, Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow place wide; And the chief of the huge white creatures, his knees in the soft star-flame, Lay loose in a place of shadow: we drew the reins by his side.
Golden the nails of his bird-claws, flung loosely along the dim ground; In one was a branch soft-shining, with bells more many than sighs, In midst of an old man’s bosom; owls ruffling and pacing around, Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes.
And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers; for nowhere in any clann Of the high people of Soraca nor in glamour by demons flung, Are faces alive with such beauty made known to the salt eye of man, Yet weary with passions that faded when the sevenfold seas were young.
And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep’s forebear, far sung by the Sennachies. I saw how those slumberers, grown weary, there camping in grasses deep, Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the wandering seas, Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of unhuman sleep.
Snatching the horn of Niamh, I blew a lingering note; Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like the stirring of flies. He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of his throat, Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes.
I cried, ‘Come out of the shadow, king of the nails of gold! And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of your hands, That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old; Your questioner, Oisin, is worthy, he comes from the Fenian lands.’
Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the smoke of their dreams; His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came; Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow dropping a sound in faint streams Softer than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame.
Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth, The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered stone Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth, And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.
In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low; And the pearl-pale Niamh lay by me, her brow on the midst of my breast; And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years ’gan flow; Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our rest.
And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot; How the fetlocks drip blood in the battle, when the fallen on fallen lie rolled; How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron’s plot, And the names of the demons whose hammers made armour for Midhir of old.
And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot; That the spearshaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of osier and hide; How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spear-head’s burning spot; How the slow, blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide.
But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their throngs, Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales; Came by me the Kings of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter and songs, Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the tempest with sails.
Came Blanid, MacNessa, tall Fergus who feastward of old time slunk; Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittle on his beard never dry, Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car-borne, his mighty head sunk Helpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and death-making eye.
And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams, And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone. So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not, with creatures of dreams, In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone.
At times our slumber was lightened. When the sun was on silver or gold; When brushed with the wings of the owls, in the dimness they love going by; When a glow-worm was green on a grass leaf lured from his lair in the mould; Half wakening, we lifted our eyelids, and gazed on the grass with a sigh.
So watched I when, man of the croziers, at the heel of a century fell, Weak, in the midst of the meadow, from his miles in the midst of the air, A starling like them that forgathered ’neath a moon waking white as a shell, When the Fenians made foray at morning with Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair.
I awoke: the strange horse without summons out of the distance ran, Thrusting his nose to my shoulder; he knew in his bosom deep That once more moved in my bosom the ancient sadness of man, And that I would leave the immortals, their dimness, their dews dropping sleep.
O, had you seen beautiful Niamh grow white as the waters are white, Lord of the croziers, you even had lifted your hands and wept: But, the bird in my fingers, I mounted, remembering alone that delight Of twilight and slumber were gone, and that hoofs impatiently stept.
I cried, ‘O Niamh! O white one! if only a twelve-houred day, I must gaze on the beard of Finn, and move where the old men and young In the Fenians’ dwellings of wattle lean on the chessboards and play, Ah, sweet to me now were even bald Conan’s slanderous tongue!
‘Like me were some galley forsaken far off in Meridian isle, Remembering its long-oared companions, sails turning to thread-bare rags; No more to crawl on the seas with long oars mile after mile, But to be amid shooting of flies and flowering of rushes and flags.’
Their motionless eyeballs of spirits grown mild with mysterious thought, Watched her those seamless faces from the valley’s glimmering girth; As she murmured, ‘O wandering Oisin, the strength of the bell-branch is naught, For there moves alive in your fingers the fluttering sadness of earth.
‘Then go through the lands in the saddle and see what the mortals do, And softly come to your Niamh over the tops of the tide; But weep for your Niamh, O Oisin, weep; for if only your shoe Brush lightly as haymouse earth pebbles, you will come no more to my side.
‘O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?’ I saw from a distant saddle; from the earth she made her moan; ‘I would die like a small withered leaf in the autumn, for breast unto breast We shall mingle no more, nor our gazes empty their sweetness lone
‘In the isles of the farthest seas where only the spirits come. Were the winds less soft than the breath of a pigeon who sleeps on her nest, Nor lost in the star-fires and odours the sound of the sea’s vague drum, O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?’
The wailing grew distant; I rode by the woods of the wrinkling bark, Where ever is murmurous dropping, old silence and that one sound; For no live creatures live there, no weasels move in the dark; In a reverie forgetful of all things, over the bubbling ground.
And I rode by the plains of the sea’s edge, where all is barren and gray, Gray sands on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees, Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away, Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.
And the winds made the sands on the sea’s edge turning and turning go, As my mind made the names of the Fenians. Far from the hazel and oak I rode away on the surges, where, high as the saddle bow, Fled foam underneath me, and round me, a wandering and milky smoke.
Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast, Snatching the bird in secret; nor knew I, embosomed apart, When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast, For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gates of my heart.
Till fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hay Came, and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down; Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a shore far away, From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-weeds brown.
If I were as I once was, the strong hoofs crushing the sand and the shells, Coming out of the sea as the dawn comes, a chaunt of love on my lips, Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells, I would leave no saint’s head on his body from Rachlin to Bera of ships.
Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-path Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made, Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the rath, And a small and feeble race stooping with mattock and spade.
Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet; While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood, Awaiting in patience the straw-death, croziered one, caught in their net: Went the laughter of scorn from my mouth like the roaring of wind in a wood.
And because I went by them so huge and so speedy with eyes so bright, Came after the hard gaze of youth, or an old man lifted his head: And I rode and I rode, and I cried out, ‘The Fenians hunt wolves in the night, So sleep they by daytime.’ A voice cried, ‘The Fenians a long time are dead.’
A whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the flesh of his face as dried grass, And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sad as a child without milk; And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew how men sorrow and pass, And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyes that glimmer like silk.
And wrapping my face in my hair, I murmured, ‘In old age they ceased’; And my tears were larger than berries, and I murmured, ‘Where white clouds lie spread On Crevroe or broad Knockfefin, with many of old they feast On the floors of the gods.’ He cried, ‘No, the gods a long time are dead.’
And lonely and longing for Niamh, I shivered and turned me about, The heart in me longing to leap like a grasshopper into her heart; I turned and rode to the westward, and followed the sea’s old shout Till I saw where Maeve lies sleeping till starlight and midnight part.
And there at the foot of the mountain, two carried a sack full of sand, They bore it with staggering and sweating, but fell with their burden at length: Leaning down from the gem-studded saddle, I flung it five yards with my hand, With a sob for men waxing so weakly, a sob for the Fenians’ old strength.
The rest you have heard of, O croziered one; how, when divided the girth, I fell on the path, and the horse went away like a summer fly; And my years three hundred fell on me, and I rose, and walked on the earth, A creeping old man, full of sleep, with the spittle on his beard never dry.
How the men of the sand-sack showed me a church with its belfry in air; Sorry place, where for swing of the war-axe in my dim eyes the crozier gleams; What place have Caolte and Conan, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair? Speak, you too are old with your memories, an old man surrounded with dreams.
S. PATRIC
Where the flesh of the footsole clingeth on the burning stones is their place; Where the demons whip them with wires on the burning stones of wide hell, Watching the blessed ones move far off, and the smile on God’s face, Between them a gateway of brass, and the howl of the angels who fell.
OISIN
Put the staff in my hands; for I go to the Fenians, O cleric, to chaunt The war-songs that roused them of old; they will rise, making clouds with their breath Innumerable, singing, exultant; the clay underneath them shall pant, And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them in death.
And demons afraid in their darkness; deep horror of eyes and of wings, Afraid their ears on the earth laid, shall listen and rise up and weep; Hearing the shaking of shields and the quiver of stretched bowstrings, Hearing hell loud with a murmur, as shouting and mocking we sweep.
We will tear out the flaming stones, and batter the gateway of brass And enter, and none sayeth ‘No’ when there enters the strongly armed guest; Make clean as a broom cleans, and march on as oxen move over young grass; Then feast, making converse of Eire, of wars, and of old wounds, and rest.
S. PATRIC
On the flaming stones, without refuge, the limbs of the Fenians are tost; None war on the masters of Hell, who could break up the world in their rage; But kneel and wear out the flags and pray for your soul that is lost Through the demon love of its youth and its godless and passionate age.
OISIN
Ah, me! to be shaken with coughing and broken with old age and pain, Without laughter, a show unto children, alone with remembrance and fear, All emptied of purple hours as a beggar’s cloak in the rain, As a grass seed crushed by a pebble, as a wolf sucked under a weir.
It were sad to gaze on the blessed and no man I loved of old there; I throw down the chain of small stones! when life in my body has ceased, I will go to Caolte, and Conan, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair, And dwell in the house of the Fenians, be they in flames or at feast.
