A man has a hope for heaven, But soulless a faery dies, As a leaf that is old, and withered and cold When the wint’ry vapours rise. Soon shall our wings be stilled, And our laughter over and done, So ...

Behold the flashing waters, A cloven, dancing jet, That from the milk-white marble For ever foam and fret; Far off in drowsy valleys Where the meadow-saffrons blow, The feet of summer dabble In their ...

A woodland valley at evening. Around a wood-fire sit three shepherds; without a curve rises the smoke. First Shepherd: Heavy with wool the sheep are gathered in, And through the mansion of the spirit ...

A woodland valley at evening. Around a wood-fire sit three shepherds; without a curve rises the smoke. First Shepherd: Heavy with wool the sheep are gathered in, And through the mansion of the spirit ...

A ruined palace in the forest. Away in the depth of the shadow of the pillars a motionless Figure. Old Knight: Enter the Old Knight. Knight: Behold I bend before thee to the ground Until my beard is i...

Around the twitter of the lips of dust A tossing laugh between their redness ’bides⁠— With patient beauty yonder Attic bust In the deep alcove’s dimness smiles and hides. Two spirit things a man hath ...

The child pursuing lizards in the grass, The sage, who deep in central nature delves, The preacher watching for the evil hour to pass, All these are souls that fly from their dread selves. The squirre...

The vision of a rock where lightnings whirl’d Bruising the darkness with their crackling light; The waves, enormous wanderers of the world, Beat on it with their hammers day and night. Two figures cro...

Yonder the sickle of the moon sails on, But here the Lioness licks her soft cub Tender and fearless on her funeral pyre; Above, saliva dripping from his jaws, The Lion, the world’s great solitary, ben...

Remembering thee, I search out these faint flowers Of rhyme; remembering thee, this crescent night While o’er the buds and o’er the grass-blades, bright And clinging with the dew of odorous showers, W...

My love, we will go, we will go, I and you, And away in the woods we will scatter the dew; And the salmon behold, and the ousel too, My love, we will hear, I and you, we will hear, The calling afar of...

She prays for father, mother dear, To Him with thunder shod, She prays for every falling tear In the holy church of God. For all good men now fallen ill, For merry men that weep, For holiest teachers ...

The living woods forego their care, Their dread of autumn’s mortal wing, And shake their birds upon the air, And like a silver trumpet ring. The giddy bee’s complacent croon, Where long grey grasses b...

Come and dream of kings and kingdoms, Cooking chestnuts on the bars⁠— Round us the white roads are endless, Mournful under mournful stars. Whisper lest we too may sadden, Round us herds of shadows ste...

All the words that I gather, And all the words that I write, Must spread out their wings untiring, And never rest in their flight, Till they come where your sad, sad heart is, And sing to you in the n...

I had a chair at every hearth, When no one turned to see, With “Look at that old fellow there, And who may he be?” And therefore do I wander now, And the fret lies on me. The road-side trees keep murm...

S. Patric: You who are bent, and bald, and blind, With a heavy heart and a wandering mind, Have known three centuries, poets sing, Of dalliance with a demon thing. Usheen: Sad to remember, sick with y...

S. Patric: You who are bent, and bald, and blind, With a heavy heart and a wandering mind, Have known three centuries, poets sing, Of dalliance with a demon thing. Usheen: Sad to remember, sick with y...

Usheen: Now, man of croziers, shadows called our names And then away, away, like whirling flames; And now fled by, mist-covered, without sound, The youth and lady and the deer and hound; “Gaze no more...

Usheen: Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke, High as the saddle girth, covering away from our glances the tide; And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pal...

Beloved, hear my bitter tale!⁠— Now making busy with the oar, Now flinging loose the slanting sail, I hurried from the woody shore, And plucked small fruits on Innisfree. (Ah, mournful Danaan quicken ...

I pray that I ever be weaving An intellectual tune, But weaving it out of threads From the distaff of the moon. Wisdom and dreams are one, For dreams are the flowers ablow, And Wisdom the fruit of the...

A marble-flagged, pillared room. Magical instruments in one corner. A fountain in the centre. Vivien: Looking down into the fountain. Where moves there any beautiful as I, Save, with the little golden...

Now wherefore hast thou tears innumerous? Hast thou not known all sorrow and delight Wandering of yore in forests rumorous, Beneath the flaming eyeballs of the night, And as a slave been wakeful in th...

Flames the shuttle of the lightning across the driving sleet, Ay, and shakes in sea-green waverings along the fishers’ street; Gone the stars and gone the white moon, gone and puffed away and dead. Ne...

A moonlit moor. Fairies leading a child. Male Fairies.: Do not fear us, earthly maid! We will lead you hand in hand By the willows in the glade, By the gorse on the high land, By the pasture where the...

We, too, have seen our bravest and our best To prisons go, and mossy ruin rest Where homes once whitened vale and mountain crest; Therefore, O nation of the bleeding breast, Libations, from the Hungar...

The fairy doctor comes our way Over the sorrel-covered wold⁠— Now sadly, now unearthly gay, A little withered man, and old. He knows by signs of secret wit The man whose hour of death draws nigh, And ...

Unto the heart of the woodland straying, Where the shaking leaf with the beam was playing, Musingly wandered the village priest. As the summer voice of the daytime ceased, He came to the home of the f...

Scene:⁠—A circle of Druidic stones. First Fairy: Afar from our lawn and our levee, O sister of sorrowful gaze! Where the roses in scarlet are heavy And dream of the end of their days, You move in anot...

A little boy outside the sycamore wood Saw on the wood’s edge gleam an ash-grey feather; A kid, held by one soft white ear for tether, Trotted beside him in a playful mood. A little boy inside the syc...

The Maker of the stars and worlds Sat underneath the market cross, And the old men were walking, walking, And little boys played pitch and toss. “The props,” said He, “of stars and worlds Are prayers ...

Singing in this London street To the rhythm of their feet, By a window’s feeble light Are two ragged children bright⁠— Larger sparrows of the town, Nested ’mong the vapours brown. Far away the starry ...

The child who chases lizards in the grass, The sage who deep in central nature delves, The preacher watching for the ill hour to pass⁠— All these are souls who fly from their dread selves. Two spirit-...

The child who chases lizards in the grass, The sage who deep in central nature delves, The preacher watching for the ill hour to pass⁠— All these are souls who fly from their dread selves....

Two spirit-things a man hath for his friends⁠— Sorrow, that gives for guerdon liberty, And joy, the touching of whose finger lends To lightest of all light things sanctity....

Long thou for nothing, neither sad nor gay; Long thou for nothing, neither night nor day; Not even “I long to see thy longing over,” To the ever-longing and mournful spirit say....

The ghosts went by me with their lips apart From death’s late languor as these lines I read On Brahma’s gateway, “They within have fed The soul upon the ashes of the heart.”...

This heard I where, amid the apple trees, Wild indolence and music have no date, “I laughed upon the lips of Sophocles, I go as soft as folly; I am Fate.”...

“Around, the twitter of the lips of dust A tossing laugh between their red abides; With patient beauty yonder Attic bust In the deep alcove’s dimness smiles and hides.”...

The heart of noon folds silence and folds sleep, For noon and midnight from each other borrow, And Joy, in growing deeper and more deep, Walks in the vesture of her sister Sorrow....

When you are sad, The mother of the stars weeps too, And all her starlight is with sorrow mad, And tears of fire fall gently in the dew. When you are sad, The mother of the wind mourns too, And her ol...

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide; The Druid, gray, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed, Who cast round Fergus d...

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide; The Druid, gray, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed, Who cast round Fergus d...

Fergus: The whole day have I followed in the rocks, And you have changed and flowed from shape to shape, First as a raven on whose ancient wings Scarcely a feather lingered, then you seemed A weasel m...

A man came slowly from the setting sun, To Emer, raddling raiment in her dun, And said, “I am that swineherd, whom you bid Go watch the road between the wood and tide, But now I have no need to watch ...

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna’s children ...

If Michael, leader of God’s host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven’s door-post He would his deeds forget. Brooding no more upon God’s wars In his Divine homestead, He would ...

Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled Above the tide of hours, trouble the air, And God’s bell buoyed to be the water’s care; While hushed from fea...

We who are old, old and gay, O so old! Thousands of years, thousands of years, If all were told: Give to these children, new from the world, Silence and love; And the long dew-dropping hours of the ni...

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade....

The angels are stooping Above your bed; They weary of trooping With the whimpering dead. God’s laughing in heaven To see you so good; The Sailing Seven Are gay with His mood. I sigh that kiss you, For...

A pity beyond all telling Is hid in the heart of love: The folk who are buying and selling, The clouds on their journey above, The cold wet winds ever blowing, And the shadowy hazel grove Where mouse-...

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, The brilliant moon and all the milky sky, And all that famous harmony of leaves, Had blotted out man’s image and his cry. A girl arose that had red mournful lip...

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read; and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved you...

I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee; And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim o...

I dreamed that one had died in a strange place Near no accustomed hand; And they had nailed the boards above her face, The peasants of that land, Wondering to lay her in that solitude, And raised abov...

All the heavy days are over; Leave the body’s coloured pride Underneath the grass and clover, With the feet laid side by side. Bathed in flaming founts of duty She’ll not ask a haughty dress; Carry al...

Who will go drive with Fergus now, And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade, And dance upon the level shore? Young man, lift up your russet brow, And lift your tender eyelids, maid, And brood on hopes a...

He stood among a crowd at Drumahair; His heart hung all upon a silken dress, And he had known at last some tenderness, Before earth made of him her sleepy care; But when a man poured fish into a pile,...

There was a green branch hung with many a bell When her own people ruled this tragic Eire; And from its murmuring greenness, calm of faery, A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell. It charmed away the m...

Although I shelter from the rain Under a broken tree My chair was nearest to the fire In every company. That talked of love or politics Ere time transfigured me. Though lads are making pikes again For...

The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day; For half his flock were in their beds, Or under green sods lay. Once, while he nodded on a chair, At the moth-hour of eve, Another poor man sent ...

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear, The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars wi...

Know, that I would accounted be True brother of that company, That sang to sweeten Ireland’s wrong, Ballad and story, rann and song; Nor be I any less of them, Because the red-rose-bordered hem Of her...

There was a man whom Sorrow named his friend And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming, Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming And humming sands, where windy surges wend: And he called loud...

There was a man whom Sorrow named his friend And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming, Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming And humming sands, where windy surges wend: And he called loud...

“What do you make so fair and bright?” “I make the cloak of Sorrow: O, lovely to see in all men’s sight Shall be the cloak of Sorrow, In all men’s sight.” “What do you build with sails for flight?” “I...

A little Indian temple in the Golden Age. Around it a garden; around that the forest. Anashuya, the young priestess, kneeling within the temple. Anashuya: Send peace on all the lands and flickering co...

I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees, My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees, My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moorfowl pace All dripping on a gr...

The island dreams under the dawn And great boughs drop tranquillity; The peahens dance on a smooth lawn, A parrot sways upon a tree, Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea. Here we will moor our...

Autumn is over the long leaves that love us, And over the mice in the barley sheaves; Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us, And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves. The hour of the waning of love...

“Your eyes that once were never weary of mine Are bowed in sorrow under their trembling lids, Because our love is waning.” And then she: “Although our love is waning, let us stand By the lone border o...

I sat on cushioned otter skin: My word was law from Ith to Emen, And shook at Invar Amargin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away From girl and boy and man and beast;...

Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water rats; There we’ve hid our faery vats, Full of berries, And of reddest st...

Shy one, shy one, Shy one of my heart, She moves in the firelight Pensively apart. She carries in the dishes, And lays them in a row. To an isle in the water With her would I go. She carries in the ca...

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish,...

You waves, though you dance by my feet like children at play, Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and you dart; In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves were more gay, When ...

Good Father John O’Hart In penal days rode out To a shoneen who had free lands And his own snipe and trout. In trust took he John’s lands; Sleiveens were all his race; And he gave them as dowers to hi...

Come round me, little childer; There, don’t fling stones at me Because I mutter as I go; But pity Moll Magee. My man was a poor fisher With shore lines in the say; My work was saltin’ herrings The who...

“Lay me in a cushioned chair; Carry me, ye four, With cushions here and cushions there, To see the world once more. “To stable and to kennel go; Bring what’s there to bring; Lead my Lollard to and fro...

While I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes, My heart would brim with dreams about the times When we bent down above the fading coals; And talked of the dark folk, who live in souls Of passionate m...

He who measures gain and loss, When he gave to thee the Rose, Gave to me alone the Cross; Where the blood-red blossom blows In a wood of dew and moss, There thy wandering pathway goes, Mine where wate...

The friends that have it I do wrong When ever I remake a song, Should know what issue is at stake: It is myself that I remake....

Accursed who brings to light of day The writings I have cast away! But blessed he that stirs them not And lets the kind worm take the lot!...

“The Man that I praise,” Cries out the empty well, “Lives all his days Where a hand on the bell Can call the milch-cows To the comfortable door of his house. Who but an idiot would praise Dry stones i...

The host is riding from Knocknarea And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare; Caolte tossing his burning hair And Niamh calling Away, come away: Empty your heart of its mortal dream. The winds awaken, the ...

The host is riding from Knocknarea And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare; Caolte tossing his burning hair And Niamh calling Away, come away: Empty your heart of its mortal dream. The winds awaken, the ...

O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will Flame under flame, till Time be no more; Have you not heard that our hearts are old, T...

Time drops in decay, Like a candle burnt out, And the mountains and woods Have their day, have their day; What one in the rout Of the fire-born moods Has fallen away?...

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould, Are wrongin...

O’Driscoll drove with a song The wild duck and the drake From the tall and the tufted reeds Of the drear Hart Lake. And he saw how the reeds grew dark At the coming of night tide, And dreamed of the l...

Although you hide in the ebb and flow Of the pale tide when the moon has set, The people of coming days will know About the casting out of my net, And how you have leaped times out of mind Over the li...

The Danaan children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold, And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes, For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies, With heavy whitening wings, and ...

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn. Your mother Eire is always young, De...

I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering...

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; And the young lie long and dre...

O what to me the little room That was brimmed up with prayer and rest; He bade me out into the gloom, And my breast lies upon his breast. O what to me my mother’s care, The house where I was safe and ...

Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, I had a beautiful friend And dreamed that the old despair Would end in love in the end: She looked in my heart one day And saw your image was there; She has gone ...

Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns! I have been changed to a hound with one red ear; I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns, For somebody hid hatred and hope and de...

I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake, Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white; The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night, The East her hidden joy before t...

O curlew, cry no more in the air, Or only to the waters in the West; Because your crying brings to my mind Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair That was shaken out over my breast: There is enough e...

When my arms wrap you round I press My heart upon the loveliness That has long faded from the world; The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled In shadowy pools, when armies fled; The love-tales wroug...

I bring you with reverent hands The books of my numberless dreams; White woman that passion has worn As the tide wears the dove-grey sands, And with heart more old than the horn That is brimmed from t...

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 o...

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 w...

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-...

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...

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 s...

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 ...

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 therefore...

I wander by the edge Of this desolate lake Where wind cries in the sedge: Until the axle break That keeps the stars in their round, And hands hurl in the deep The banners of East and West, And the gir...

Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair, And dream about the great and their pride; They have spoken against you everywhere, But weigh this song with the great and their pride; I made it out of a mo...

Cumhal called out, bending his head, Till Dathi came and stood, With a blink in his eyes at the cave mouth, Between the wind and the wood. And Cumhal said, bending his knees, “I have come by the windy...

Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir And tumult of defeated dreams; and...

Where has Maid Quiet gone to, Nodding her russet hood? The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood. O how could I be so calm When she rose up to depart? Now words that called up the...

When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide; When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay; Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds ...

Though you are in your shining days, Voices among the crowd And new friends busy with your praise, Be not unkind or proud, But think about old friends the most: Time’s bitter flood will rise, Your bea...

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 ...

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...

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, Forgivin...

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...

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...

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, Folk dance like a wave of the sea; My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet, My brother in Mocharabuiee. I passed my brother and cousin: They read in their books of prayer;...

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 tire...

I hardly hear the curlew cry, Nor the grey rush when the wind is high, Before my thoughts begin to run On the heir of Ulad, Buan’s son, Baile, who had the honey mouth; And that mild woman of the south...

I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees Hum in the lime tree flowers; and put away The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness That empty the heart...

I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees Hum in the lime tree flowers; and put away The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness That empty the heart...

I thought of your beauty, and this arrow, Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow. There’s no man may look upon her, no man; As when newly grown to be a woman, Tall and noble but with face and bos...

One that is ever kind said yesterday: “Your well-beloved’s hair has threads of grey, And little shadows come about her eyes; Time can but make it easier to be wise Though now it seem impossible, and s...

O thought, fly to her when the end of day Awakens an old memory, and say, “Your strength, that is so lofty and fierce and kind, It might call up a new age, calling to mind The queens that were imagine...

Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is ...

I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds: “Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will, I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words, For the roads are unending, and there is no place...

We sat together at one summer’s end, That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, And you and I, and talked of poetry. I said: “A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s tho...

I heard the old, old men say, “Everything alters, And one by one we drop away.” They had hands like claws, and their knees Were twisted like the old thorn trees By the waters. I heard the old, old men...

I have no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde, Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle, Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while; Nor Ulad, when Naoise had thrown a sail upon...

O hurry where by water among the trees, The delicate steeping stag and his lady sigh When they have but looked upon their images, Would none had ever loved but you and I! Or have you heard that slidin...

Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song. All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other’s,...

Three voices together: Hurry to bless the hands that play, The mouths that speak, the notes and strings, O masters of the glittering town! O! lay the shrilly trumpet down, Though drunken with the flag...

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 a...

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 a...

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 w...

I swayed upon the gaudy stern The butt end of a steering oar, And everywhere that I could turn A crowd upon a shore. And though I would have hushed the crowd There was no mother’s son but said, “What ...

I swayed upon the gaudy stern The butt end of a steering oar, And everywhere that I could turn A crowd upon a shore. And though I would have hushed the crowd There was no mother’s son but said, “What ...

If any man drew near When I was young, I thought, “He holds her dear,” And shook with hate and fear. But oh, ’twas bitter wrong If he could pass her by With an indifferent eye. Whereon I wrote and wro...

I had this thought awhile ago, “My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land.” And I grew weary of the sun Until my thoughts cleared up again, Remembering ...

Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage e...

Some may have blamed you that you took away The verses that could move them on the day When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind With lightning you went from me, and I could find Noth...

“Would it were anything but merely voice!” The No King cried who after that was King, Because he had not heard of anything That balanced with a word is more than noise; Yet Old Romance being kind, let...

Ah, that Time could touch a form That could show what Homer’s age Bred to be a hero’s wage. “Were not all her life but storm, Would not painters paint a form Of such noble lines,” I said, “Such a deli...

O heart, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What’s not for their applause, Being for a woman’s sake. Enough if the work has seemed, So did she your strength renew, A dream that a lion h...

The fascination of what’s difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart. There’s something ails our colt That must, as if it had not holy bl...

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That’s all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh....

Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth....

Where, where but here have Pride and Truth, That long to give themselves for wage, To shake their wicked sides at youth Restraining reckless middle-age....

You say, as I have often given tongue In praise of what another’s said or sung, ’Twere politic to do the like by these; But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?...

“Put off that mask of burning gold With emerald eyes.” “O no, my dear, you make so bold To find if hearts be wild and wise, And yet not cold.” “I would but find what’s there to find, Love or deceit.” ...

How should the world be luckier if this house, Where passion and precision have been one Time out of mind, became too ruinous To breed the lidless eye that loves the sun? And the sweet laughing eagle ...

Dear Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case. When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight they’ll leave the place, While those same hundreds mock another day Because we have made ...

These are the clouds about the fallen sun, The majesty that shuts his burning eye: The weak lay hand on what the strong has done, Till that be tumbled that was lifted high And discord follow upon unis...

There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind: We, too, had good attendance once, Hearers and hearteners of the wo...

Sickness brought me this Thought, in that scale of his: Why should I be dismayed Though flame had burned the whole World, as it were a coal, Now I have seen it weighed Against a soul?...

All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman’s face, or worse⁠— The seeming needs of my fool-driven land; Now nothing but comes readier to the hand Than this accustomed to...

I whispered, “I am too young.” And then, “I am old enough”; Wherefore I threw a penny To find out if I might love. “Go and love, go and love, young man, If the lady be young and fair.” Ah, penny, brow...

Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain Somewhere in ear-shot for the story’s end, Old Dublin merchant “free of ten and four”18 Or trading out of Galway into Spain; And country scholar, Robert Emmet’...

Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain Somewhere in ear-shot for the story’s end, Old Dublin merchant “free of ten and four”18 Or trading out of Galway into Spain; And country scholar, Robert Emmet’...

Poets with whom I learned my trade, Companions of the Cheshire Cheese, Here’s an old story I’ve re-made, Imagining ’twould better please Your ears than stories now in fashion, Though you may think I w...

King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen He had out-ridden his war-wasted men That with empounded cattle trod the mire; And where beech trees had mixed a pale gre...

You gave but will not give again Until enough of Paudeen’s pence By Biddy’s halfpennies have lain To be “some sort of evidence,” Before you’ll put your guineas down, That things it were a pride to giv...

What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone; For men were born to p...

Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honour bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his ...

Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite Of our old Paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind Among the stones and thorn trees, under morning light; Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind ...

If you have revisited the town, thin Shade, Whether to look upon your monument (I wonder if the builder has been paid) Or happier thoughted when the day is spent To drink of that salt breath out of th...

We have cried in our despair That men desert, For some trivial affair Or noisy, insolent sport, Beauty that we have won From bitterest hours; Yet we, had we walked within Those topless towers Where He...

Once, when midnight smote the air, Eunuchs ran through Hell and met On every crowded street to stare Upon great Juan riding by: Even like these to rail and sweat Staring upon his sinewy thigh....

“Though to my feathers in the wet, I have stood here from break of day, I have not found a thing to eat For only rubbish comes my way. Am I to live on lebeen-lone?” Muttered the old crane of Gort. “Fo...

Three old hermits took the air By a cold and desolate sea, First was muttering a prayer, Second rummaged for a flea; On a windy stone, the third, Giddy with his hundredth year, Sang unnoticed like a b...

“Time to put off the world and go somewhere And find my health again in the sea air,” Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck, “And make my soul before my pate is bare.” “And get a comfortable wif...

As I came over Windy Gap They threw a halfpenny into my cap, For I am running to Paradise; And all that I need do is to wish And somebody puts his hand in the dish To throw me a bit of salted fish: An...

A cursing rogue with a merry face, A bundle of rags upon a crutch, Stumbled upon that windy place Called Croghan, and it was as much As the one sturdy leg could do To keep him upright while he cursed....

Hope that you may understand! What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live That had gone With...

Toil, and grow rich, What’s that but to lie With a foul witch And after, drained dry, To be brought To the chamber where Lies one long sought With despair....

What’s riches to him That has made a great peacock With the pride of his eye? The wind-beaten, stone-grey, And desolate Three-rock Would nourish his whim. Live he or die Amid wet rocks and heather, Hi...

Pour wine and dance if Manhood still have pride, Bring roses if the rose be yet in bloom; The cataract smokes upon the mountain side, Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb. Pull down the blinds, bring f...

Dance there upon the shore; What need have you to care For wind or water’s roar? And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet; Being young you have not known The fool’s triumph, nor yet Love ...

Has no one said those daring Kind eyes should be more learn’d? Or warned you how despairing The moths are when they are burned, I could have warned you, but you are young, So we speak a different tong...

The moments passed as at a play, I had the wisdom love brings forth; I had my share of mother wit And yet for all that I could say, And though I had her praise for it, A cloud blown from the cut-throa...

Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face, And even old men’s eyes grew dim, this hand alone, Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping place, Babbling of fallen majesty, records what’...

Now must I these three praise⁠— Three women that have wrought What joy is in my days; One that no passing thought, Nor those unpassing cares No, not in these fifteen Many times troubled years, Could e...

Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting Heaven That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice, And thereupon imagination and heart were driven So wild that every casual thought of that ...

She lived in storm and strife, Her soul had such desire For what proud death may bring That it could not endure The common good of life, But lived as ’twere a king That packed his marriage day With ba...

Being out of heart with government I took a broken root to fling Where the proud, wayward squirrel went, Taking delight that he could spring; And he, with that low whinnying sound That is like laughte...

Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain-bea...

A doll in the doll-maker’s house Looks at the cradle and bawls: “That is an insult to us.” But the oldest of all the dolls Who had seen, being kept for show, Generations of his sort, Out-screams the w...

I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world’s eyes As though they’d wrought it. Song, let them take it For...

While I, from that reed-throated whisperer Who comes at need, although not now as once A clear articulation in the air But inwardly, surmise companions Beyond the fling of the dull ass’s hoof, —Ben Jo...

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...

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...

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 ninet...

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 th’ ancient tower, And having talked to some late hour Climb up the narrow winding sta...

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 th’ ancient tower, And having talked to some late hour Climb up the narrow winding sta...

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...

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...

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 se...

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 ...

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,...

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...

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 mee...

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 ...

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, s...

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...

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 comm...

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...

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 ...

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 be...

“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-grandfathe...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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 m...

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 forg...

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 ea...

“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 ...

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, A...

When have I last looked on The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies Of the dark leopards of the moon? All the wild witches, those most noble ladies, For all their broom-sticks and their tears...

I would be ignorant as the dawn That has looked down On that old queen measuring a town With the pin of a brooch, Or on the withered men that saw From their pedantic Babylon The careless planets in th...

May God be praised for woman That gives up all her mind, A man may find in no man A friendship of her kind That covers all he has brought As with her flesh and bone, Nor quarrels with a thought Becaus...

Although I can see him still The freckled man who goes To a grey place on a hill In grey Connemara clothes At dawn to cast his flies, It’s long since I began To call up to the eyes This wise and simpl...

“Call down the hawk from the air; Let him be hooded or caged Till the yellow eye has grown mild, For larder and spit are bare, The old cook enraged, The scullion gone wild.” “I will not be clapped in ...

One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain Because the mountain grass Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain....

She is foremost of those that I would hear praised. I have gone about the house, gone up and down As a man does who has published a new book Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown, And though I h...

“What have I earned for all that work,” I said, “For all that I have done at my own charge? The daily spite of this unmannerly town, Where who has served the most is most defamed, The reputation of hi...

There is a queen in China, or maybe it’s in Spain, And birthdays and holidays such praises can be heard Of her unblemished lineaments, a whiteness with no stain, That she might be that sprightly girl ...

She might, so noble from head To great shapely knees The long flowing line, Have walked to the altar Through the holy images At Pallas Athene’s side, Or been fit spoil for a centaur Drunk with the unm...

There is grey in your hair. Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath When you are passing; But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing Because it was your prayer Recovered him upon the bed of ...

Others because you did not keep That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine; Yet always when I look death in the face, When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, Sudde...

This night has been so strange that it seemed As if the hair stood up on my head. From going-down of the sun I have dreamed That women laughing, or timid or wild, In rustle of lace or silken stuff, Cl...

Hands, do what you’re bid; Bring the balloon of the mind That bellies and drags in the wind Into its narrow shed....

Come play with me; Why should you run Through the shaking tree As though I’d a gun To strike you dead? When all I would do Is to scratch your head And let you go....

I think it better that in times like these A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth We have no gift to set a statesman right; He has had enough of meddling who can please A young girl in the indolence...

Five-and-twenty years have gone Since old William Pollexfen Laid his strong bones down in death By his wife Elizabeth In the grey stone tomb he made. And after twenty years they laid In that tomb by h...

With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair Propped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face. She would not have us sad because she is ...

With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair Propped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face. She would not have us sad because she is ...

Bring where our Beauty lies A new modelled doll, or drawing, With a friend’s or an enemy’s Features, or maybe showing Her features when a tress Of dull red hair was flowing Over some silken dress Cut ...

Because to-day is some religious festival They had a priest say Mass, and even the Japanese, Heel up and weight on toe, must face the wall —Pedant in passion, learned in old courtesies, Vehement and w...

She is playing like a child And penance is the play, Fantastical and wild Because the end of day Shows her that some one soon Will come from the house, and say⁠— Though play is but half-done⁠— “Come i...

She has not grown uncivil As narrow natures would And called the pleasures evil Happier days thought good; She knows herself a woman No red and white of a face, Or rank, raised from a common Unreckona...

When her soul flies to the predestined dancing-place (I have no speech but symbol, the pagan speech I made Amid the dreams of youth) let her come face to face, Amid that first astonishment, with Grani...

Pardon great enemy, Without an angry thought We’ve carried in our tree, And here and there have bought Till all the boughs are gay, And she may look from the bed On pretty things that may Please a fan...

Hic: On the grey sand beside the shallow stream Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still A lamp burns on beside the open book That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon And though you have ...

God grant a blessing on this tower and cottage And on my heirs, if all remain unspoiled, No table, or chair or stool not simple enough For shepherd lads in Galilee; and grant That I myself for portion...

An old man cocked his ear upon a bridge; He and his friend, their faces to the South, Had trod the uneven road. Their boots were soiled, Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape; They had kept a steady...

The cat went here and there And the moon spun round like a top, And the nearest kin of the moon The creeping cat looked up. Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon, For wander and wail as he would The pu...

Hunchback: Stand up and lift your hand and bless A man that finds great bitterness In thinking of his lost renown. A Roman Caesar is held down Under this hump. Saint: God tries each man According to a...

A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there; And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence. I start out of my sleep to think Some day I may ...

A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there; And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence. I start out of my sleep to think Some day I may ...

I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire, The speckled cat slept on my knee; We never thought to enquire Where the brown hare might be, And whether the door were shut. Who knows how she drank the ...

This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands. Once he lived a schoolmaster With a stark, denying look, A string of scholars went in fea...

On the grey rock of Cashel the mind’s eye Has called up the cold spirits that are born When the old moon is vanished from the sky And the new still hides her horn. Under blank eyes and fingers never s...

On the grey rock of Cashel the mind’s eye Has called up the cold spirits that are born When the old moon is vanished from the sky And the new still hides her horn. Under blank eyes and fingers never s...

On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw, A Buddha, hand at rest, Hand lifted up that blest; And right between these two a girl at play That it may be had danc...

I knew that I had seen, had seen at last That girl my unremembering nights hold fast Or else my dreams that fly, If I should rub an eye, And yet in flying fling into my meat A crazy juice that makes t...

A few of these poems may be difficult to understand, perhaps more difficult than I know. Goethe has said that the poet needs all philosophy, but that he must keep it out of his work. After the first f...

A few of these poems may be difficult to understand, perhaps more difficult than I know. Goethe has said that the poet needs all philosophy, but that he must keep it out of his work. After the first f...

He: Opinion is not worth a rush; In this altar-piece the knight, Who grips his long spear so to push That dragon through the fading light, Loved the lady; and it’s plain The half-dead dragon was her t...

And thus declared that Arab lady: “Last night, where under the wild moon On grassy mattress I had laid me, Within my arms great Solomon, I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue Not his, not mine.” Wh...

He: Never until this night have I been stirred. The elaborate star-light has thrown reflections On the dark stream, Till all the eddies gleam; And thereupon there comes that scream From terrified, inv...

Do not because this day I have grown saturnine Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought Because I have no other youth, can make me pine; For how should I forget the wisdom that you brought,...

I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered aw...

O but we talked at large before The sixteen men were shot, But who can talk of give and take, What should be and what not? While those dead men are loitering there To stir the boiling pot. You say tha...

“O words are lightly spoken,” Said Pearse to Connolly, “Maybe a breath of politic words Has withered our Rose Tree; Or maybe but a wind that blows Across the bitter sea.” “It needs to be but watered,”...

She that but little patience knew, From childhood on, had now so much A grey gull lost its fear and flew Down to her cell and there alit, And there endured her fingers’ touch And from her fingers ate ...

They must to keep their certainty accuse All that are different of a base intent; Pull down established honour; hawk for news Whatever their loose fantasy invent And murmur it with bated breath, as th...

Was it the double of my dream The woman that by me lay Dreamed, or did we halve a dream Under the first cold gleam of day? I thought “there is a waterfall Upon Ben Bulben side, That all my childhood c...

For certain minutes at the least That crafty demon and that loud beast That plague me day and night Ran out of my sight; Though I had long pernned in the gyre, Between my hatred and desire, I saw my f...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and eve...

Once more the storm is howling and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wi...

For one throb of the Artery, While on that old grey stone I sat Under the old wind-broken tree, I knew that One is animate Mankind inanimate fantasy....

I, the poet William Yeats, With old mill boards and sea-green slates, And smithy work from the Gort forge, Restored this tower for my wife George; And may these characters remain When all is ruin once...

That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations⁠—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish flesh or fowl, commend a...

That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations⁠—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish flesh or fowl, commend a...

That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations⁠—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish flesh or fowl, commend a...

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Mon...

O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fasten...

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy emperor awake; Or set upon...

What shall I do with this absurdity⁠— O heart, O troubled heart⁠—this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog’s tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imaginatio...

What shall I do with this absurdity⁠— O heart, O troubled heart⁠—this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog’s tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imaginatio...

I pace upon the battlements and stare On the foundations of a house, or where Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth; And send imagination forth Under the day’s declining beam, and call Imag...

It is time that I wrote my will; I choose upstanding men, That climb the streams until The fountain leap, and at dawn Drop their cast at the side Of dripping stone; I declare They shall inherit my pri...

Surely among a rich man’s flowering lawns, Amid the rustle of his planted hills, Life overflows without ambitious pains; And rains down life until the basin spills, And mounts more dizzy high the more...

Surely among a rich man’s flowering lawns, Amid the rustle of his planted hills, Life overflows without ambitious pains; And rains down life until the basin spills, And mounts more dizzy high the more...

An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower, A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall, An acre of stony ground, Where the symbolic rose can break in flower, Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable, T...

Two heavy tressels, and a board Where Sato’s gift, a changeless sword, By pen and paper lies, That it may moralise My days out of their aimlessness. A bit of an embroidered dress Covers its wooden she...

Having inherited a vigorous mind From my old fathers I must nourish dreams And leave a woman and a man behind As vigorous of mind, and yet it seems Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind, Scarce...

An affable Irregular, A heavily built Falstaffan man, Comes cracking jokes of civil war As though to die by gunshot were The finest play under the sun. A brown Lieutenant and his men, Half dressed in ...

The bees build in the crevices Of loosening masonry, and there The mother birds bring grubs and flies. My wall is loosening; honey-bees Come build in the empty house of the stare. We are closed in, an...

I climb to the tower top and lean upon broken stone, A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all, Valley, river, and elms, under the light of a moon That seems unlike itself, that seems unchan...

Many ingenious lovely things are gone That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, Protected from the circle of the moon That pitches common things about. There stood Amid the ornamental bronze and sto...

Many ingenious lovely things are gone That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, Protected from the circle of the moon That pitches common things about. There stood Amid the ornamental bronze and sto...

When Loie Fuller’s Chinese dancers enwound A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth, It seemed that a dragon of air Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round Or hurried them off on its own fur...

Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it Before that brief gleam of its life be gone, An image of its s...

We, who seven years ago Talked of honour and of truth, Shriek with pleasure if we show The weasel’s twist, the weasel’s tooth....

Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the levelling wind. Come let us mock at the wise; With all tho...

Violence upon the roads: violence of horses; Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane, But wearied running round and round in their courses All break and ...

Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when abounding hedges ring Declare that winter’s best of all; And after that there’s nothing good Because the spring-t...

Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest....

If you, that have grown old, were the first dead, Neither catalpa tree nor scented lime Should hear my living feet, nor would I tread Where we wrought that shall break the teeth of time. Let the new f...

Bid a strong ghost stand at the head That my Michael may sleep sound, Nor cry, nor turn in the bed Till his morning meal come round; And may departing twilight keep All dread afar till morning’s back,...

The true faith discovered was When painted panel, statuary, Glass-mosaic, window-glass, Straightened all that went awry When some peasant gospeller Imagined Him upon the floor Of a working-carpenter. ...

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those t...

Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood, Even where horrible green parrots call and swing. My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud. I knew that horse play, knew it for a mur...

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning, A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and history, To cut and sew, be neat in everyth...

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning, A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and history, To cut and sew, be neat in everyth...

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent Above a sinking fire, a tale that she Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event That changed some childish day to tragedy⁠— Told, and it seemed that our two natures ble...

And thinking of that fit of grief or rage I look upon one child or t’other there And wonder if she stood so at that age⁠— For even daughters of the swan can share Something of every paddler’s heritage...

Her present image floats in to the mind⁠— Did quattrocento finger fashion it Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind And took a mass of shadows for its meat? And I though never of Ledaean kind Had...

What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap Honey of generation33 had betrayed, And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape As recollection or the drug decide, Would think her son, did she but see ...

Plato thought nature but a spume that plays Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; Solider Aristotle played the taws Upon the bottom of a king of kings; World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras Fingered upo...

Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother’s reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose. And yet they too break hearts⁠—O Presences Th...

Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great rooted blossom...

Come praise Colonus’ horses and come praise The wine dark of the wood’s intricacies, The nightingale that deafens daylight there, If daylight ever visit where, Unvisited by tempest or by sun, Immortal...

The Girl: I rage at my own image in the glass, That’s so unlike myself that when you praise it It is as though you praised another, or even Mocked me with praise of my mere opposite; And when I wake t...

A strange thing surely that my heart when love had come unsought Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade, Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out. It could not bear that bur...

A strange thing surely that my heart when love had come unsought Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade, Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out. It could not bear that bur...

The Heart behind its rib laughed out, “You have called me mad,” it said. “Because I made you turn away and run from that young child; How could she mate with fifty years that was so wildly bred? Let t...

Though nurtured like the sailing moon In beauty’s murderous brood, She walked awhile and blushed awhile And on my pathway stood Until I thought her body bore A heart of flesh and blood. But since I la...

Though nurtured like the sailing moon In beauty’s murderous brood, She walked awhile and blushed awhile And on my pathway stood Until I thought her body bore A heart of flesh and blood. But since I la...

Like the moon her kindness is, If kindness I may call What has no comprehension in’t, But is the same for all As though my sorrow were a scene Upon a painted wall. So like a bit of stone I lie Under a...

A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown....

I have pointed out the yelling pack, The hare leap to the wood, And when I pass a compliment Rejoice as lover should At the drooping of an eye At the mantling of the blood. Then suddenly my heart is w...

A crazy man that found a cup, When all but dead of thirst, Hardly dared to wet his mouth Imagining, moon accursed, That another mouthful And his beating heart would burst. October last I found it too ...

We should be hidden from their eyes, Being but holy shows And bodies broken like a thorn Whereon the bleak north blows, To think of buried Hector And that none living knows. The women take so little s...

Laughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it, And when the moon’s pot-bellied I get a laughing fit, For that old Madge comes down the lane A stone upon her breast, And a cloak wrapped...

We sat under an old thorn-tree And talked away the night, Told all that had been said or done Since first we saw the light, And when we talked of growing up Knew that we’d halved a soul And fell the o...

I have old women’s secrets now That had those of the young; Madge tells me what I dared not think When my blood was strong, And what had drowned a lover once Sounds like an old song. Though Margery is...

O bid me mount and sail up there Amid the cloudy wrack, For Peg and Meg and Paris’ love That had so straight a back, Are gone away, and some that stay, Have changed their silk for sack. Were I but the...

They hold their public meetings where Our most renowned patriots stand, One among the birds of the air, A stumpier on either hand; And all the popular statesmen say That purity built up the state And ...

Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain. Even from that delight m...

Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain....

Even from that delight memory treasures so, Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow, As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know....

In the long echoing street the laughing dancers throng, The bride is carried to the bridegroom’s chamber through torchlight and tumultuous song; I celebrate the silent kiss that ends short life or lon...

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away....

Kusta ben Luka is my name, I write To Abd al-Rabban; fellow roysterer once, Now the good Caliph’s learned Treasurer, And for no ear but his. Carry this letter Through the great gallery of the Treasure...

Midnight has come and the great Christ Church Bell, And may a lesser bell, sound through the room; And it is All Souls’ Night, And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel Bubble upon the table. A ghost...

The poem is founded upon the middle Irish dialogues of S. Patric and Usheen and a certain Gaelic poem of the last century. The events it describes are supposed to have taken place rather in the indefi...