The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats
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FIRST MUSICIAN.
They are gone, they are gone. The proud may lie by the proud.
SECOND MUSICIAN.
Though we were bidden to sing, cry nothing loud.
FIRST MUSICIAN.
They are gone, they are gone.
SECOND MUSICIAN.
Whispering were enough.
FIRST MUSICIAN.
Into the secret wilderness of their love.
SECOND MUSICIAN.
A high, grey cairn. What more is to be said?
FIRST MUSICIAN.
Eagles have gone into their cloudy bed.
[Shouting outside. FERGUS enters. Many men with scythes and sickles and torches gather about the doors. The house is lit with the glare of their torches.
FERGUS.
Where’s Naisi, son of Usna, and his queen?
I and a thousand reaping-hooks and scythes
Demand him of you.
CONCHUBAR.
You have come too late.
I have accomplished all. Deirdre is mine;
She is my queen, and no man now can rob me.
I had to climb the topmost bough and pull
This apple among the winds. Open the curtain,
That Fergus learn my triumph from her lips.
[The curtain is drawn back. The MUSICIANS begin to keen with low voices.
No, no; I’ll not believe it. She is not dead—
She cannot have escaped a second time!
FERGUS.
King, she is dead; but lay no hand upon her.
What’s this but empty cage and tangled wire,
Now the bird’s gone? but I’ll not have you touch it.
CONCHUBAR.
You are all traitors, all against me—all.
And she has deceived me for a second time.
And every common man may keep his wife,
But not the King.
[Loud shouting outside: ‘Death to Conchubar!’ ‘Where is Naisi?’ etc. The dark-skinned men gather round CONCHUBAR and draw their swords; but he motions them away.
I have no need of weapons,
There’s not a traitor that dare stop my way.
Howl, if you will; but I, being king, did right
In choosing her most fitting to be queen,
And letting no boy lover take the sway.
THE SHADOWY WATERS
To Lady Gregory
I walked among the seven woods of Coole,
Shan-walla, where a willow-bordered pond
Gathers the wild duck from the winter dawn;
Shady Kyle-dortha; sunnier Kyle-na-gno,
Where many hundred squirrels are as happy
As though they had been hidden by green boughs,
Where old age cannot find them; Pairc-na-lea,
Where hazel and ash and privet blind the paths;
Dim Pairc-na-carraig, where the wild bees fling
Their sudden fragrances on the green air;
Dim Pairc-na-tarav, where enchanted eyes
Have seen immortal, mild, proud shadows walk;
Dim Inchy wood, that hides badger and fox
And marten-cat, and borders that old wood
Wise Biddy Early called the wicked wood:
Seven odours, seven murmurs, seven woods.
I had not eyes like those enchanted eyes,
Yet dreamed that beings happier than men
Moved round me in the shadows, and at night
My dreams were cloven by voices and by fires;
And the images I have woven in this story
Of Forgael and Dectora and the empty waters
Moved round me in the voices and the fires,
And more I may not write of, for they that cleave
The waters of sleep can make a chattering tongue
Heavy like stone, their wisdom being half silence.
How shall I name you, immortal, mild, proud shadows?
I only know that all we know comes from you,
And that you come from Eden on flying feet.
Is Eden far away, or do you hide
From human thought, as hares and mice and coneys
That run before the reaping-hook and lie
In the last ridge of the barley? Do our woods
And winds and ponds cover more quiet woods,
More shining winds, more star-glimmering ponds?
Is Eden out of time and out of space?
And do you gather about us when pale light
Shining on water and fallen among leaves,
And winds blowing from flowers, and whirr of feathers
And the green quiet, have uplifted the heart?
I have made this poem for you, that men may read it
Before they read of Forgael and Dectora,
As men in the old times, before the harps began,
Poured out wine for the high invisible ones.
September, 1900.
THE HARP OF AENGUS
Edain came out of Midher’s hill, and lay
Beside young Aengus in his tower of glass,
Where time is drowned in odour-laden winds
And druid moons, and murmuring of boughs,
And sleepy boughs, and boughs where apples made
Of opal and ruby and pale chrysolite
Awake unsleeping fires; and wove seven strings,
Sweet with all music, out of his long hair,
Because her hands had been made wild by love;
When Midher’s wife had changed her to a fly,
He made a harp with druid apple wood
That she among her winds might know he wept;
And