Responsibilities, and other poems
William Butler Yeats




Yeats William Butler

Responsibilities, and other poems



		'In dreams begins responsibility.'

    Old Play.

		'How am I fallen from myself, for a long time now
		I have not seen the Prince of Chang in my dreams.'

    Khoung-fou-tseu.






RESPONSIBILITIES





[INTRODUCTORY RHYMES]


		Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain
		Somewhere 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 blood
		That 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 stood
		Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne
		Till your bad master blenched and all was lost;
		You merchant skipper that leaped overboard
		After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay,
		You most of all, silent and fierce old man
		Because you were the spectacle that stirred
		My 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-nine
		I 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 please
		Your ears than stories now in fashion,
		Though you may think I waste my breath
		Pretending that there can be passion
		That has more life in it than death,
		And though at bottling of your wine
		The 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 still
		And sleepy, having had their meal,
		And smoky torches made a glare
		On painted pillars, on a deal
		Of fiddles and of flutes hung there
		By the ancient holy hands that brought them
		From murmuring Murias, on cups —
		Old Goban hammered them and wrought them,
		And put his pattern round their tops
		To hold the wine they buy of him.
		But from the juice that made them wise
		All those had lifted up the dim
		Imaginations of their eyes,
		For one that was like woman made
		Before their sleepy eyelids ran
		And 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 then
		Hollo 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 luck
		That emptied all our days to come.
		I knew a woman none could please,
		Because she dreamed when but a child
		Of 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 years
		I 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 song
		That you might have a heavier purse,
		Nor gave loud service to a cause
		That you might have a troop of friends.
		You kept the Muses' sterner laws,
		And unrepenting faced your ends,
		And therefore earned the right – and yet
		Dowson and Johnson most I praise —
		To troop with those the world's forgot,
		And copy their proud steady gaze.

		'The Danish troop was driven out
		Between the dawn and dusk,' she said;
		'Although the event was long in doubt,
		Although the King of Ireland's dead
		And half the kings, before sundown
		All was accomplished.'

		'When this day
		Murrough, the King of Ireland's son,
		Foot after foot was giving way,
		He and his best troops back to back
		Had 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 blood
		That 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 air
		And yet could give so fine a stroke?"
		Thereon a young man met his eye,
		Who said, "Because she held me in
		Her 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 take
		The fortune that had been my shame
		Seeing, King's son, what wounds you have."
		'Twas roundly spoke, but when night came
		He 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 sake
		Of a new friend he has turned a ghost.
		What does he care if my heart break?
		I call for spade and horse and hound
		That we may harry him.' Thereon
		She cast herself upon the ground
		And rent her clothes and made her moan:
		'Why are they faithless when their might
		Is from the holy shades that rove
		The grey rock and the windy light?
		Why should the faithfullest heart most love
		The bitter sweetness of false faces?
		Why must the lasting love what passes,
		Why are the gods by men betrayed!'

		But thereon every god stood up
		With a slow smile and without sound,
		And stretching forth his arm and cup
		To 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 repute
		With the loud host before the sea,
		That think sword strokes were better meant
		Than lover's music – let that be,
		So that the wandering foot's content.




THE TWO KINGS


		King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood
		Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen
		He had out-ridden his war-wasted men
		That with empounded cattle trod the mire;
		And where beech trees had mixed a pale green light
		With the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a stag
		Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.
		Because it stood upon his path and seemed
		More hands in height than any stag in the world
		He sat with tightened rein and loosened mouth
		Upon his trembling horse, then drove the spur;
		But the stag stooped and ran at him, and passed,
		Rending the horse's flank. King Eochaid reeled
		Then drew his sword to hold its levelled point
		Against the stag. When horn and steel were met
		The horn resounded as though it had been silver,
		A sweet, miraculous, terrifying sound.
		Horn locked in sword, they tugged and struggled there
		As though a stag and unicorn were met
		In Africa on Mountain of the Moon,
		Until at last the double horns, drawn backward,
		Butted below the single and so pierced
		The entrails of the horse. Dropping his sword
		King Eochaid seized the horns in his strong hands
		And stared into the sea-green eye, and so
		Hither and thither to and fro they trod
		Till 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 speed
		Amid the elaborate wilderness of the air.
		Through bush they plunged and over ivied root,
		And where the stone struck fire, while in the leaves
		A squirrel whinnied and a bird screamed out;
		But when at last he forced those sinewy flanks
		Against a beech bole, he threw down the beast
		And knelt above it with drawn knife. On the instant
		It vanished like a shadow, and a cry
		So mournful that it seemed the cry of one
		Who had lost some unimaginable treasure
		Wandered between the blue and the green leaf
		And climbed into the air, crumbling away,
		Till all had seemed a shadow or a vision
		But for the trodden mire, the pool of blood,
		The disembowelled horse.

		King Eochaid ran,
		Toward peopled Tara, nor stood to draw his breath
		Until he came before the painted wall,
		The posts of polished yew, circled with bronze,
		Of the great door; but though the hanging lamps
		Showed their faint light through the unshuttered windows,
		Nor door, nor mouth, nor slipper made a noise,
		Nor on the ancient beaten paths, that wound
		From well-side or from plough-land, was there noise;
		And there had been no sound of living thing
		Before him or behind, but that far-off
		On the horizon edge bellowed the herds.
		Knowing that silence brings no good to kings,
		And mocks returning victory, he passed
		Between the pillars with a beating heart
		And saw where in the midst of the great hall
		Pale-faced, alone upon a bench, Edain
		Sat 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 foot
		She started and then knew whose foot it was;
		But when he thought to take her in his arms
		She motioned him afar, and rose and spoke:
		'I have sent among the fields or to the woods
		The fighting men and servants of this house,
		For I would have your judgment upon one
		Who is self-accused. If she be innocent
		She would not look in any known man's face
		Till 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 lips
		The meaning of that monstrous day.

		Then she:
		'You brought me where your brother Ardan sat
		Always in his one seat, and bid me care him
		Through that strange illness that had fixed him there,
		And should he die to heap his burial mound
		And carve his name in Ogham.' Eochaid said,
		'He lives?' 'He lives and is a healthy man.'
		'While I have him and you it matters little
		What man you have lost, what evil you have found.'
		'I bid them make his bed under this roof
		And 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 things
		That 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 world
		For medicine." Thereon he cried aloud:
		"Day after day you question me, and I,
		Because there is such a storm amid my thoughts
		I 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 worse
		Than 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 down
		And 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 waters
		And 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 though
		She may have worn silk clothes, or worn a crown,
		She'll not be proud, knowing within her heart
		That our sufficient portion of the world
		Is 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 out
		And for nine days he had food from other hands,
		And for nine days my mind went whirling round
		The one disastrous zodiac, muttering
		That the immedicable mound's beyond
		Our questioning, beyond our pity even.
		But when nine days had gone I stood again
		Before his chair and bending down my head
		Told him, that when Orion rose, and all
		The 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 hidden
		Close to a clump of beech trees in the wood
		Westward of Tara, there to await a friend
		That could, as he had told her, work his cure
		And 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 skins
		Ardan, and though I called to him and tried
		To 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 way
		To plough or pasture-land, might see me there,
		Went out.

		Among the ivy-covered rocks,
		As on the blue light of a sword, a man
		Who had unnatural majesty, and eyes
		Like the eyes of some great kite scouring the woods,
		Stood on my path. Trembling from head to foot
		I 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 looking
		Under the eyelids of another, for it was my craft
		That 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 craft
		Sucked up the passion out of him again
		And 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 come
		That I may claim you as my wife again."
		I was no longer terrified, his voice
		Had half awakened some old memory,
		Yet answered him: "I am King Eochaid's wife
		And with him have found every happiness
		Women can find." With a most masterful voice,
		That made the body seem as it were a string
		Under a bow, he cried: "What happiness
		Can lovers have that know their happiness
		Must end at the dumb stone? But where we build
		Our sudden palaces in the still air
		Pleasure itself can bring no weariness,
		Nor can time waste the cheek, nor is there foot
		That 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 bed
		And 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 not
		That 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 know
		She builds her nest upon a narrow ledge
		Above a windy precipice?" Then he:
		"Seeing that when you come to the death-bed
		You 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 I
		Thrust him away with both my hands and cried,
		"Never will I believe there is any change
		Can blot out of my memory this life
		Sweetened by death, but if I could believe
		That were a double hunger in my lips
		For 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 cocks
		Crow upon Tara.'

		King Eochaid bowed his head
		And thanked her for her kindness to his brother,
		For that she promised, and for that refused.

		Thereon the bellowing of the empounded herds
		Rose round the walls, and through the bronze-ringed door
		Jostled and shouted those war-wasted men,
		And in the midst King Eochaid's brother stood.
		He'd heard that din on the horizon's edge
		And 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 again
		Until enough of Paudeen's pence
		By Biddy's halfpennies have lain
		To be 'some sort of evidence,'
		Before you'll put your guineas down,
		That things it were a pride to give
		Are what the blind and ignorant town
		Imagines best to make it thrive.
		What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
		His mummers to the market place,
		What th' onion-sellers thought or did
		So that his Plautus set the pace
		For the Italian comedies?
		And Guidobaldo, when he made
		That grammar school of courtesies
		Where wit and beauty learned their trade
		Upon Urbino's windy hill,
		Had sent no runners to and fro
		That he might learn the shepherds' will.
		And when they drove out Cosimo,
		Indifferent how the rancour ran,
		He gave the hours they had set free
		To Michelozzo's latest plan
		For the San Marco Library,
		Whence turbulent Italy should draw
		Delight in Art whose end is peace,
		In logic and in natural law
		By 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 give
		What the exultant heart calls good
		That some new day may breed the best
		Because you gave, not what they would
		But the right twigs for an eagle's nest!

    December 1912.



SEPTEMBER 1913


		What need you, being come to sense,
		But fumble in a greasy till
		And add the halfpence to the pence
		And prayer to shivering prayer, until
		You 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 kind
		The names that stilled your childish play,
		They have gone about the world like wind,
		But little time had they to pray
		For 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 spread
		The 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 pain
		You'd cry 'some woman's yellow hair
		Has 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 defeat
		From any brazen throat,
		For how can you compete,
		Being honour bred, with one
		Who, were it proved he lies,
		Were neither shamed in his own
		Nor in his neighbours' eyes?
		Bred to a harder thing
		Than Triumph, turn away
		And like a laughing string
		Whereon mad fingers play
		Amid a place of stone,
		Be secret and exult,
		Because of all things known
		That is most difficult.




PAUDEEN


		Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite
		Of our old Paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind
		Among the stones and thorn trees, under morning light;
		Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind
		A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought
		That 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 spent
		To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
		When 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 man
		Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought
		In his full hands what, had they only known,
		Had given their children's children loftier thought,
		Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
		Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
		And insult heaped upon him for his pains
		And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
		An old foul mouth that slandered you had set
		The pack upon him.

		Go, unquiet wanderer,
		And gather the Glasnevin coverlet
		About your head till the dust stops your ear,
		The time for you to taste of that salt breath
		And 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 despair
		That men desert,
		For some trivial affair
		Or noisy, insolent sport,
		Beauty that we have won
		From bitterest hours;
		Yet we, had we walked within
		Those topless towers
		Where Helen walked with her boy,
		Had given but as the rest
		Of 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,




Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/yeats-william-butler/responsibilities-and-other-poems/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.


