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

      I bring you with reverent hands

      The books of my numberless dreams;

      White woman that passion has worn

      As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,

      And with heart more old than the horn

      That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:

      White woman with numberless dreams

      I bring you my passionate rhyme.

      Fasten your hair with a golden pin,

      And bind up every wandering tress;

      I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:

      It worked at them, day out, day in,

      Building a sorrowful loveliness

      Out of the battles of old times.

      You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,

      And bind up your long hair and sigh;

      And all men’s hearts must burn and beat;

      And candle-like foam on the dim sand,

      And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,

      Live but to light your passing feet.

      Be you still, be you still, trembling heart;

      Remember the wisdom out of the old days:

      Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,

      And the winds that blow through the starry ways,

      Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood

      Cover over and hide, for he has no part

      With the proud, majestical multitude.

      The jester walked in the garden:

      The garden had fallen still;

      He bade his soul rise upward

      And stand on her window-sill.

      It rose in a straight blue garment,

      When owls began to call:

      It had grown wise-tongued by thinking

      Of a quiet and light footfall;

      But the young queen would not listen;

      She rose in her pale night gown;

      She drew in the heavy casement

      And pushed the latches down.

      He bade his heart go to her,

      When the owls called out no more;

      In a red and quivering garment

      It sang to her through the door.

      It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming,

      Of a flutter of flower-like hair;

      But she took up her fan from the table

      And waved it off on the air.

      ‘I have cap and bells,’ he pondered,

      ‘I will send them to her and die’;

      And when the morning whitened

      He left them where she went by.

      She laid them upon her bosom,

      Under a cloud of her hair,

      And her red lips sang them a love-song:

      Till stars grew out of the air.

      She opened her door and her window,

      And the heart and the soul came through,

      To her right hand came the red one,

      To her left hand came the blue.

      They set up a noise like crickets,

      A chattering wise and sweet,

      And her hair was a folded flower

      And the quiet of love in her feet.

      The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears

      Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,

      And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries

      Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.

      We who still labour by the cromlec on the shore,

      The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,

      Being weary of the world’s empires, bow down to you,

      Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.

      If this importunate heart trouble your peace

      With words lighter than air,

      Or hopes that in mere hoping flicker and cease;

      Crumple the rose in your hair;

      And cover your lips with odorous twilight and say,

      ‘O Hearts of wind-blown flame!

      O Winds, elder than changing of night and day,

      That murmuring and longing came,

      From marble cities loud with tabors of old

      In dove-gray faery lands;

      From battle banners, fold upon purple fold,

      Queens wrought with glimmering hands;

      That saw young Niamh hover with love-lorn face

      Above the wandering tide;

      And lingered in the hidden desolate place,

      Where the last Phœnix died

      And wrapped the flames above his holy head;

      And still murmur and long:

      O Piteous Hearts, changing till change be dead

      In a tumultuous song’:

      And cover the pale blossoms of your breast

      With your dim heavy hair,

      And trouble with a sigh for all things longing for rest

      The odorous twilight there.

      I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,

      For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;

      And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood

      With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:

      I cried in my dream, O women, bid the young men lay

      Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair,

      Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair

      Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away.

      O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,

      The poets labouring all their days

      To build a perfect beauty in rhyme

      Are overthrown by a woman’s gaze

      And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:

      And