The Wild Swans at Coole
William Yeats




Yeats W. B. William Butler

The Wild Swans at Coole





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 water
		Mirrors a still sky;
		Upon the brimming water among the stones
		Are nine and fifty swans.

		The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
		Since I first made my count;
		I saw, before I had well finished,
		All suddenly mount
		And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
		Upon 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 water
		Mysterious, beautiful;
		Among what rushes will they build,
		By what lake's edge or pool
		Delight men's eyes, when I awake some day
		To find they have flown away?




IN MEMORY OF

MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY



1

		Now that we're almost settled in our house
		I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us
		Beside a fire of turf in the ancient tower,
		And having talked to some late hour
		Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed:
		Discoverers of forgotten truth
		Or mere companions of my youth,
		All, all are in my thoughts to-night, being dead.


2

		Always 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 smart
		In the affections of our heart,
		And quarrels are blown up upon that head;
		But not a friend that I would bring
		This night can set us quarrelling,
		For all that come into my mind are dead.


3

		Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind,
		That loved his learning better than mankind,
		Though courteous to the worst; much falling he
		Brooded upon sanctity
		Till all his Greek and Latin learning seemed
		A long blast upon the horn that brought
		A little nearer to his thought
		A measureless consummation that he dreamed.


4

		And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,
		That dying chose the living world for text
		And never could have rested in the tomb
		But that, long travelling, he had come
		Towards nightfall upon certain set apart
		In a most desolate stony place,
		Towards nightfall upon a race
		Passionate and simple like his heart.


5

		And then I think of old George Pollexfen,
		In muscular youth well known to Mayo men
		For horsemanship at meets or at race-courses,
		That could have shown how purebred horses
		And solid men, for all their passion, live
		But as the outrageous stars incline
		By opposition, square and trine;
		Having grown sluggish and contemplative.


6

		They were my close companions many a year,
		A portion of my mind and life, as it were,
		And now their breathless faces seem to look
		Out 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.


7

		For all things the delighted eye now sees
		Were loved by him; the old storm-broken trees
		That cast their shadows upon road and bridge;
		The tower set on the stream's edge;
		The ford where drinking cattle make a stir
		Nightly, and startled by that sound
		The water-hen must change her ground;
		He might have been your heartiest welcomer.


8

		When with the Galway foxhounds he would ride
		From Castle Taylor to the Roxborough side
		Or Esserkelly plain, few kept his pace;
		At Mooneen he had leaped a place
		So perilous that half the astonished meet
		Had shut their eyes, and where was it
		He rode a race without a bit?
		And yet his mind outran the horses' feet.


9

		We dreamed that a great painter had been born
		To cold Clare rock and Galway rock and thorn,
		To that stern colour and that delicate line
		That are our secret discipline
		Wherein the gazing heart doubles her might.
		Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
		And yet he had the intensity
		To have published all to be a world's delight.


10

		What other could so well have counselled us
		In all lovely intricacies of a house
		As he that practised or that understood
		All work in metal or in wood,
		In moulded plaster or in carven stone?
		Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
		And all he did done perfectly
		As though he had but that one trade alone.


11

		Some burn damp fagots, others may consume
		The entire combustible world in one small room
		As though dried straw, and if we turn about
		The bare chimney is gone black out
		Because 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?


12

		I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind
		That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind
		All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved,
		Or boyish intellect approved,
		With some appropriate commentary on each;
		Until imagination brought
		A fitter welcome; but a thought
		Of that late death took all my heart for speech.




AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES

HIS DEATH


		I know that I shall meet my fate
		Somewhere among the clouds above;
		Those that I fight I do not hate
		Those that I guard I do not love;
		My country is Kiltartan Cross,
		My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
		No likely end could bring them loss
		Or leave them happier than before.
		Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
		Nor public man, nor angry crowds,
		A lonely impulse of delight
		Drove 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 behind
		In balance with this life, this death.




MEN IMPROVE WITH THE

YEARS


		I am worn out with dreams;
		A weather-worn, marble triton
		Among the streams;
		And all day long I look
		Upon this lady's beauty
		As though I had found in book
		A pictured beauty,
		Pleased to have filled the eyes
		Or the discerning ears,
		Delighted to be but wise,
		For men improve with the years;
		And yet and yet
		Is this my dream, or the truth?
		O would that we had met
		When I had my burning youth;
		But I grow old among dreams,
		A weather-worn, marble triton
		Among the streams.




THE COLLAR-BONE OF A

HARE


		Would I could cast a sail on the water
		Where many a king has gone
		And 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 is
		To change my loves while dancing
		And pay but a kiss for a kiss.

		I would find by the edge of that water
		The collar-bone of a hare
		Worn thin by the lapping of water,
		And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare
		At the old bitter world where they marry in churches,
		And laugh over the untroubled water
		At all who marry in churches,
		Through the white thin bone of a hare.




UNDER THE ROUND TOWER


		'Although I'd lie lapped up in linen
		A deal I'd sweat and little earn
		If I should live as live the neighbours,'
		Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne;
		'Stretch bones till the daylight come
		On great-grandfather's battered tomb.'

		Upon a grey old battered tombstone
		In Glendalough beside the stream,
		Where the O'Byrnes and Byrnes are buried,
		He stretched his bones and fell in a dream
		Of sun and moon that a good hour
		Bellowed 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 up
		Until they pranced upon the top.

		That golden king and that wild lady
		Sang till stars began to fade,
		Hands gripped in hands, toes close together,
		Hair spread on the wind they made;
		That lady and that golden king
		Could 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 pocket
		And snug it in a feather-bed,
		I cannot find the peace of home
		On great-grandfather's battered tomb.'




SOLOMON TO SHEBA


		Sang Solomon to Sheba,
		And kissed her dusky face,
		'All day long from mid-day
		We have talked in the one place,
		All day long from shadowless noon
		We have gone round and round
		In the narrow theme of love
		Like an old horse in a pound.'

		To Solomon sang Sheba,
		Planted on his knees,
		'If you had broached a matter
		That might the learned please,
		You had before the sun had thrown
		Our shadows on the ground
		Discovered 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 woman
		Born under the skies
		Dare match in learning with us two,
		And all day long we have found
		There's not a thing but love can make
		The 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 mould
		In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
		Appears, and when we have gone is gone again,
		Being more indifferent to our solitude
		Than '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 needed
		Youth to prolong
		Than dumb-bell and foil
		To keep the body young.
		Oh, who could have foretold
		That the heart grows old?

		Though I have many words,
		What woman's satisfied,
		I am no longer faint
		Because at her side?
		Oh, who could have foretold
		That the heart grows old?

		I have not lost desire
		But the heart that I had,
		I thought 'twould burn my body
		Laid on the death-bed.
		But who could have foretold
		That the heart grows old?




TO A YOUNG BEAUTY


		Dear fellow-artist, why so free
		With every sort of company,
		With every Jack and Jill?
		Choose your companions from the best;
		Who draws a bucket with the rest
		Soon topples down the hill.

		You may, that mirror for a school,
		Be passionate, not bountiful
		As common beauties may,
		Who were not born to keep in trim
		With old Ezekiel's cherubim
		But 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 end
		With Landor and with Donne.




TO A YOUNG GIRL


		My dear, my dear, I know
		More than another
		What makes your heart beat so;
		Not even your own mother
		Can know it as I know,
		Who broke my heart for her
		When the wild thought,
		That she denies
		And has forgot,
		Set all her blood astir
		And glittered in her eyes.




THE SCHOLARS


		Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
		Old, learned, respectable bald heads
		Edit and annotate the lines
		That young men, tossing on their beds,
		Rhymed out in love's despair
		To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

		They'll cough in the ink to the world's end;
		Wear out the carpet with their shoes
		Earning respect; have no strange friend;
		If they have sinned nobody knows.
		Lord, what would they say
		Should their Catullus walk that way?




TOM O'ROUGHLEY


		'Though logic choppers rule the town,
		And every man and maid and boy
		Has marked a distant object down,
		An aimless joy is a pure joy,'
		Or so did Tom O'Roughley say
		That saw the surges running by,
		'And wisdom is a butterfly
		And not a gloomy bird of prey.

		'If little planned is little sinned
		But little need the grave distress.
		What's dying but a second wind?
		How but in zigzag wantonness
		Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?'
		Or something of that sort he said,
		'And if my dearest friend were dead
		I'd dance a measure on his grave.'




THE SAD SHEPHERD



Shepherd

		That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year
		I wished before it ceased.


Goatherd

		Nor bird nor beast
		Could 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 met
		Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap
		From stone to stone.


Shepherd

		I am looking for strayed sheep;
		Something has troubled me and in my trouble
		I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,
		For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble
		And make the daylight sweet once more; but when
		I had driven every rhyme into its place
		The sheep had gone from theirs.


Goatherd

		I know right well




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