The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 1 of 8. Poems Lyrical and Narrative. Yeats William Butler

      O, women, kneeling by your altar rails long hence,

      When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,

      And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air

      And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense;

      Bend down and pray for the great sin I wove in song,

      Till Mary of the wounded heart cry a sweet cry,

      And call to my beloved and me: ‘No longer fly

      Amid the hovering, piteous, penitential throng.’

      The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows

      Have pulled the Immortal Rose;

      And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,

      The Polar Dragon slept,

      His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:

      When will he wake from sleep?

      Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,

      With your harmonious choir

      Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,

      That my old care may cease;

      Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight

      The nets of day and night.

      Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be

      Like the pale cup of the sea,

      When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim

      Above its cloudy rim;

      But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow

      Whither her footsteps go.

      Were you but lying cold and dead,

      And lights were paling out of the West,

      You would come hither, and bend your head,

      And I would lay my head on your breast;

      And you would murmur tender words,

      Forgiving me, because you were dead:

      Nor would you rise and hasten away,

      Though you have the will of the wild birds,

      But know your hair was bound and wound

      About the stars and moon and sun:

      O would, beloved, that you lay

      Under the dock-leaves in the ground,

      While lights were paling one by one.

      Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

      Enwrought with golden and silver light,

      The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

      Of night and light and the half light,

      I would spread the cloths under your feet:

      But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

      I have spread my dreams under your feet;

      Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

      I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young

      And weep because I know all things now:

      I have been a hazel tree and they hung

      The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough

      Among my leaves in times out of mind:

      I became a rush that horses tread:

      I became a man, a hater of the wind,

      Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head

      Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair

      Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;

      Although the rushes and the fowl of the air

      Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.

      Maeve the great queen was pacing to and fro,

      Between the walls covered with beaten bronze,

      In her high house at Cruachan; the long hearth,

      Flickering with ash and hazel, but half showed

      Where the tired horse-boys lay upon the rushes,

      Or on the benches underneath the walls,

      In comfortable sleep; all living slept

      But that great queen, who more than half the night

      Had paced from door to fire and fire to door.

      Though now in her old age, in her young age

      She had been beautiful in that old way

      That’s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone,

      And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all

      But soft beauty and indolent desire.

      She could have called over the rim of the world

      Whatever woman’s lover had hit her fancy,

      And yet had been great bodied and great limbed,

      Fashioned to be the mother of strong children;

      And she’d had lucky eyes and a high heart,

      And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,

      At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,

      Sudden and laughing.

      O unquiet heart,

      Why do you praise another, praising her,

      As if there were no tale but your own tale

      Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound?

      Have I not bid you tell of that great queen

      Who has been buried some two thousand years?

      When night was at its deepest, a wild goose

      Cried from the porter’s lodge, and with long clamour

      Shook the ale horns and shields upon their hooks;

      But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power

      Had filled the house with Druid heaviness;

      And wondering who of the many-changing Sidhe

      Had come as in the old times to counsel her,

      Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall, being old,

      To that small chamber by the outer gate.

      The porter slept, although he sat upright

      With still and stony limbs and open eyes.

      Maeve waited, and when that ear-piercing noise

      Broke from his parted lips and broke again,

      She laid a hand on either of his shoulders,

      And shook him wide awake, and bid him say

      Who of the wandering many-changing ones

      Had