The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 2 of 8. William Butler Yeats

      The King did wrong to abrogate our right;

      But Seanchan, who talks of dying for it,

      Talks foolishly. Look at us, Seanchan;

      Waken out of your dream and look at us,

      Who have ridden under the moon and all the day,

      Until the moon has all but come again,

      That we might be beside you.

      I was but now

      In Almhuin, in a great high-raftered house,

      With Finn and Osgar. Odours of roast flesh

      Rose round me, and I saw the roasting-spits;

      And then the dream was broken, and I saw

      Grania dividing salmon by a stream.

      Hunger has made you dream of roasting flesh;

      And though I all but weep to think of it,

      The hunger of the crane, that starves himself

      At the full moon because he is afraid

      Of his own shadow and the glittering water,

      Seems to me little more fantastical

      Than this of yours.

      Why, that’s the very truth.

      It is as though the moon changed everything —

      Myself and all that I can hear and see;

      For when the heavy body has grown weak,

      There’s nothing that can tether the wild mind

      That, being moonstruck and fantastical,

      Goes where it fancies. I had even thought

      I knew your voice and face, but now the words

      Are so unlikely that I needs must ask

      Who is it that bids me put my hunger by.

      I am your oldest pupil, Seanchan;

      The one that has been with you many years —

      So many, that you said at Candlemas

      That I had almost done with school, and knew

      All but all that poets understand.

      My oldest pupil? No, that cannot be,

      For it is some one of the courtly crowds

      That have been round about me from sunrise,

      And I am tricked by dreams; but I’ll refute them.

      At Candlemas I bid that pupil tell me

      Why poetry is honoured, wishing to know

      If he had any weighty argument

      For distant countries and strange, churlish kings.

      What did he answer?

      I said the poets hung

      Images of the life that was in Eden

      About the child-bed of the world, that it,

      Looking upon those images, might bear

      Triumphant children. But why must I stand here,

      Repeating an old lesson, while you starve?

      Tell on, for I begin to know the voice.

      What evil thing will come upon the world

      If the Arts perish?

      If the Arts should perish,

      The world that lacked them would be like a woman,

      That looking on the cloven lips of a hare,

      Brings forth a hare-lipped child.

      But that’s not all:

      For when I asked you how a man should guard

      Those images, you had an answer also,

      If you’re the man that you have claimed to be,

      Comparing them to venerable things

      God gave to men before he gave them wheat.

      I answered – and the word was half your own —

      That he should guard them as the Men of Dea

      Guard their four treasures, as the Grail King guards

      His holy cup, or the pale, righteous horse

      The jewel that is underneath his horn,

      Pouring out life for it as one pours out

      Sweet heady wine… But now I understand;

      You would refute me out of my own mouth;

      And yet a place at table, near the King,

      Is nothing of great moment, Seanchan.

      How does so light a thing touch poetry?

      At Candlemas you called this poetry

      One of the fragile, mighty things of God,

      That die at an insult.

      Give me some true answer,

      For on that day we spoke about the Court,

      And said that all that was insulted there

      The world insulted, for the Courtly life,

      Being the first comely child of the world,

      Is the world’s model. How shall I answer him?

      Can you not give me some true argument?

      I will not tempt him with a lying one.

      O, tell him that the lovers of his music

      Have need of him.

      But I am labouring

      For some that shall be born in the nick o’ time,

      And find sweet nurture, that they may have voices,

      Even in anger, like the strings of harps;

      And how could they be born to majesty

      If I had never made the golden cradle?

      Why did you take me from my father’s fields?

      If you would leave me now, what shall I love?

      Where shall I go? What shall I set my hand to?

      And why have you put music in my ears,

      If you would send me to the clattering houses?

      I will throw down the trumpet and the harp,

      For how could I sing verses or make music

      With none to praise me, and a broken heart?

      What was it that the poets promised you,

      If it was not their sorrow? Do not speak.

      Have I not opened school on these