Seven Poems and a Fragment
William Yeats




William Butler Yeats

Seven Poems and a Fragment





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




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