Chapter VI

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 vanish, and evil gathers head:
Herodias' daughters have returned again
A sudden blast of dusty wind and after
Thunder of feet, tumult of images,
Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind;

And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter
All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries,
According to the wind, for all are blind.
But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon
There lurches past, his great eyes without thought
Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks,
That insolent fiend Robert Artisson
To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.

THE NEW FACES

If you, that have grown old were the first dead
Neither Caltapa 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 faces play what tricks they will
In the old rooms; night can outbalance day,
Our shadows rove the garden gravel still,
The living seem more shadowy than they.

A PRAYER FOR MY SON

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
That his mother may not lack
Her fill of sleep.

Bid the ghost have sword in hand:
There are malicious things, although
Few dream that they exist,
Who have planned his murder, for they know
Of some most haughty deed or thought
That waits upon his future days,
And would through hatred of the bays
Bring that to nought.

Though You can fashion everything
From nothing every day, and teach
The morning stars to sing,
You have lacked articulate speech
To tell Your simplest want, and known,
Wailing upon a woman's knee,
All of that worst ignominy
Of flesh and bone;

And when through all the town there ran
The servants of Your enemy
A woman and a man,
Unless the Holy Writings lie,
Have borne You through the smooth and rough
And through the fertile and waste,
Protecting till the danger past
With human love.

CUCHULAIN THE GIRL AND THE FOOL

THE GIRL.

I am jealous of the looks men turn on you
For all men love your worth; and I must rage
At my own image in the looking-glass
That's so unlike myself that when you praise it
It is as though you praise another, or even
Mock me with praise of my mere opposite;
And when I wake towards morn I dread myself
For the heart cries that what deception wins
My cruelty must keep; and so begone
If you have seen that image and not my worth.

CUCHULAIN.

All men have praised my strength but not my worth.

THE GIRL.

If you are no more strength than I am beauty
I will find out some cavern in the hills
And live among the ancient holy men,
For they at least have all men's reverence
And have no need of cruelty to keep
What no deception won.

CUCHULAIN.

I have heard them say
That men have reverence for their holiness
And not their worth.

THE GIRL.

God loves us for our worth;
But what care I that long for a man's love.

THE FOOL BY THE ROADSIDE.

When my days that have
From cradle run to grave
From grave to cradle run instead;
When thoughts that a fool
Has wound upon a spool
Are but loose thread, are but loose thread;

When cradle and spool are past
And I mere shade at last
Coagulate of stuff
Transparent like the wind,
I think that I may find
A faithful love, a faithful love.

THE WHEEL

Through winter-time we call on spring,
And through the spring on summer call,
And when abounding hedges sing
Declare that winter's best of all;
And after that there's nothing good
Because the spring-time has not come--
Nor know that what disturbs our blood
Is but its longing for the tomb.

A NEW END FOR 'THE KING'S THRESHOLD'

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

Die Seanchan and proclaim the right of the poets.

SEANCHAN.

Come nearer me, that I may know how face
Differs from face, and touch you with my hands.
O more than kin, O more than children could be,
For children are but born out of our blood
And share our frailty. O my chicks, my chicks,
That I have nourished underneath my wings
And fed upon my soul. (He stands up and begins to walk
down steps) I need no help.
He needs no help that joy has lifted up
Like some miraculous beast out of Ezekiel.
The man that dies has the chief part in the story,
And I will mock and mock and mock that image yonder
That evil picture in the sky--no, no--
I have all my strength again, I will outface it.
O look upon the moon that's standing there
In the blue daylight--notice her complexion
Because it is the white of leprosy
And the contagion that afflicts mankind
Falls from the moon. When I and these are dead
We should be carried to some windy hill
To lie there with uncovered face awhile
That mankind and that leper there may know
Dead faces laugh.
(He falls and then half rises.)
King, king, dead faces laugh.
(He dies)

OLDEST PUPIL.

King, king, he is dead; some strange triumphant thought
So filled his heart with joy that it has burst
Being grown too mighty for our frailty,
And we who gaze grow like him and abhor
The moments that come between us and that death
You promised us.

KING.

Take up his body.
Go where you please and lay it where you please,
So that I cannot see his face or any
That cried him towards his death.

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

Dead faces laugh!
The ancient right is gone, the new remains
And that is death.
(They go towards the king holding out their halters)
We are impatient men,
So gather up the halters in your hands.

KING.

Drive them away.
(He goes into the palace. The soldiers block the way before
the pupils.)

SOLDIER.

Here is no place for you,
For he and his pretensions now are finished.
Begone before the men at arms are bidden
To hurl you from the door.

OLDEST PUPIL.

Take up his body
And cry that driven from the populous door
He seeks high waters and the mountain birds
To claim a portion of their solitude.
(They make a litter with cloak and staffs and lay Seanchan
on it.)

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

And cry that when they took his ancient right
They took all common sleep; therefore he claims
The mountain for his mattress and his pillow.

OLDEST PUPIL.

And there he can sleep on, not noticing
Although the world be changed from worse to worse,
Amid the changeless clamour of the curlew.
(They raise the litter on their shoulders and move a few steps)

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

(motioning to them to stop)
Yet make triumphant music; sing aloud
For coming times will bless what he has blessed
And curse what he has cursed.

OLDEST PUPIL.

No, no, be still;
Or pluck a solemn music from the strings.
You wrong his greatness speaking so of triumph.

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

O silver trumpets, be you lifted up
And cry to the great race that is to come.
Long-throated swans upon the waves of time
Sing loudly, for beyond the wall of the world
That race may hear our music and awake.

OLDEST PUPIL.

(motioning the musicians to lower their trumpets)
Not what it leaves behind it in the light
But what it carries with it to the dark
Exalts the soul; nor song nor trumpet-blast
Can call up races from the worsening world
To mend the wrong and mar the solitude
Of the great shade we follow to the tomb.
(Fedelm and the pupils go out carrying the litter. Some play
a mournful music.)

NOTE ON 'THOUGHTS UPON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE WORLD' SECTION SIX.

The country people see at times certain apparitions whom they name now 'fallen angels' now 'ancient inhabitants of the country,' and describe as riding at whiles 'with flowers upon the heads of the horses.' I have assumed in the sixth poem that these horsemen, now that the times worsen, give way to worse. My last symbol Robert Artisson was an evil spirit much run after in Kilkenny at the start of the fourteenth century. Are not those who travel in the whirling dust also in the Platonic Year?--W. B. Y.

NOTE ON THE NEW END TO 'THE KING'S THRESHOLD'

Upon the revival of this play at the Abbey Theatre a few weeks ago it was played with this new end. There were a few other changes. I had originally intended to end the play tragically and would have done so but for a friend who used to say 'O do write comedy & have a few happy moments in the Theatre.' My unhappy moments were because a tragic effect is very fragile and a wrong intonation, or even a wrong light or costume will spoil it all. However the play remained always of the nature of tragedy and so subject to vicissitude.

Here ends, 'Seven Poems and a Fragment:' by William Butler Yeats: with a decoration by T. Sturge Moore. Five hundred copies of this book have been printed and published by Elizabeth Corbet Yeats on paper made in Ireland, at the Cuala Press, Churchtown, Dundrum, in the County of Dublin, Ireland. Finished in the third week of April in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-two.

End of Project Gutenberg's Seven Poems and a Fragment, by William Butler Yeats