Dawn Dance: Echoes from a Mountainside

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In midst of all, the venerable priest Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least, And, after lifting up his aged hands, Thus spake he: Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks: Whether descended from beneath the rocks That overtop your mountains; whether come From vallies where the pipe is never dumb; Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze Buds lavish gold; or ye, whose precious charge Nibble their fill at ocean's very marge, Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn: Yea, every one attend!

Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than Night-swollen mushrooms? Are not our wide plains Speckled with countless fleeces? Have not rains Green'd over April's lap? No howling sad Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had Great bounty from Endymion our lord. The earth is glad: Now while the earth was drinking it, and while Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile, And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright 'Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang: By all the trembling mazes that she ran, Hear us, great Pan!

O thou, to whom Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom Their ripen'd fruitage; yellow girted bees Their golden honeycombs; our village leas Their fairest-blossom'd beans and poppied corn; The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year All its completions—be quickly near, By every wind that nods the mountain pine, O forester divine!

Winder of the horn, When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms, To keep off mildews, and all weather harms: Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, That come a swooning over hollow grounds, And wither drearily on barren moors: Dread opener of the mysterious doors Leading to universal knowledge—see, Great son of Dryope, The many that are come to pay their vows With leaves about their brows!

Be still the unimaginable lodge For solitary thinkings; such as dodge Conception to the very bourne of heaven, Then leave the naked brain: Be still a symbol of immensity; A firmament reflected in a sea; An element filling the space between; An unknown—but no more: Even while they brought the burden to a close, A shout from the whole multitude arose, That lingered in the air like dying rolls Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine.

Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine, Young companies nimbly began dancing To the swift treble pipe, and humming string. Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly To tunes forgotten—out of memory: High genitors, unconscious did they cull Time's sweet first-fruits—they danc'd to weariness, And then in quiet circles did they press The hillock turf, and caught the latter end Of some strange history, potent to send A young mind from its bodily tenement.

Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent On either side; pitying the sad death Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath Of Zephyr slew him,—Zephyr penitent, Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament, Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. The archers too, upon a wider plain, Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft, And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top, Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope Those who would watch.

Perhaps, the trembling knee And frantic gape of lonely Niobe, Poor, lonely Niobe! Arous'd from this sad mood By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd, Uplifting his strong bow into the air, Many might after brighter visions stare: After the Argonauts, in blind amaze Tossing about on Neptune's restless ways, Until, from the horizon's vaulted side, There shot a golden splendour far and wide, Spangling those million poutings of the brine With quivering ore: Who thus were ripe for high contemplating, Might turn their steps towards the sober ring Where sat Endymion and the aged priest 'Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increas'd The silvery setting of their mortal star.

There they discours'd upon the fragile bar That keeps us from our homes ethereal; And what our duties there: Anon they wander'd, by divine converse, Into Elysium; vieing to rehearse Each one his own anticipated bliss. One felt heart-certain that he could not miss His quick gone love, among fair blossom'd boughs, Where every zephyr-sigh pouts and endows Her lips with music for the welcoming.

Another wish'd, mid that eternal spring, To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails, Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales: Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind, And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind; And, ever after, through those regions be His messenger, his little Mercury. Some were athirst in soul to see again Their fellow huntsmen o'er the wide champaign In times long past; to sit with them, and talk Of all the chances in their earthly walk; Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores Of happiness, to when upon the moors, Benighted, close they huddled from the cold, And shar'd their famish'd scrips.

Thus all out-told Their fond imaginations,—saving him Whose eyelids curtain'd up their jewels dim, Endymion: Now indeed His senses had swoon'd off: But in the self-same fixed trance he kept, Like one who on the earth had never stept. Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man, Frozen in that old tale Arabian.

Who whispers him so pantingly and close? Peona, his sweet sister: Hushing signs she made, And breath'd a sister's sorrow to persuade A yielding up, a cradling on her care. Her eloquence did breathe away the curse: She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse Of happy changes in emphatic dreams, Along a path between two little streams,— Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow, From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small; Until they came to where these streamlets fall, With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush, Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.

A little shallop, floating there hard by, Pointed its beak over the fringed bank; And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank, And dipt again, with the young couple's weight,— Peona guiding, through the water straight, Towards a bowery island opposite; Which gaining presently, she steered light Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove, Where nested was an arbour, overwove By many a summer's silent fingering; To whose cool bosom she was used to bring Her playmates, with their needle broidery, And minstrel memories of times gone by.

So she was gently glad to see him laid Under her favourite bower's quiet shade, On her own couch, new made of flower leaves, Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves When last the sun his autumn tresses shook, And the tann'd harvesters rich armfuls took. Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest: But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest Peona's busy hand against his lips, And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips In tender pressure.

And as a willow keeps A patient watch over the stream that creeps Windingly by it, so the quiet maid Held her in peace: O comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hush'd and smooth! Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain, He said: Can I want Aught else, aught nearer heaven, than such tears? Yet dry them up, in bidding hence all fears That, any longer, I will pass my days Alone and sad. No, I will once more raise My voice upon the mountain-heights; once more Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar: Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll Around the breathed boar: And, when the pleasant sun is getting low, Again I'll linger in a sloping mead To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed Our idle sheep.

So be thou cheered sweet, And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat My soul to keep in its resolved course. Surely some influence rare Went, spiritual, through the damsel's hand; For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann'd The quick invisible strings, even though she saw Endymion's spirit melt away and thaw Before the deep intoxication.

But soon she came, with sudden burst, upon Her self-possession—swung the lute aside, And earnestly said: Hast thou sinn'd in aught Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught A Paphian dove upon a message sent? Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent, Sacred to Dian? Haply, thou hast seen Her naked limbs among the alders green; And that, alas! No, I can trace Something more high perplexing in thy face! Tell me thine ailment: What indeed more strange? Or more complete to overwhelm surmise? Ambition is no sluggard: So all have set my heavier grief above These things which happen.

Rightly have they done: I, who still saw the horizontal sun Heave his broad shoulder o'er the edge of the world, Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl'd My spear aloft, as signal for the chace— I, who, for very sport of heart, would race With my own steed from Araby; pluck down A vulture from his towery perching; frown A lion into growling, loth retire— To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire, And sink thus low!

And in that nook, the very pride of June, Had I been used to pass my weary eves; The rather for the sun unwilling leaves So dear a picture of his sovereign power, And I could witness his most kingly hour, When he doth lighten up the golden reins, And paces leisurely down amber plains His snorting four. Now when his chariot last Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast, There blossom'd suddenly a magic bed Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red: At which I wondered greatly, knowing well That but one night had wrought this flowery spell; And, sitting down close by, began to muse What it might mean.

Perhaps, thought I, Morpheus, In passing here, his owlet pinions shook; Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook Her ebon urn, young Mercury, by stealth, Had dipt his rod in it: Thus on I thought, Until my head was dizzy and distraught. Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul; And shaping visions all about my sight Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light; The which became more strange, and strange, and dim, And then were gulph'd in a tumultuous swim: And then I fell asleep. Ah, can I tell The enchantment that afterwards befel?

Yet it was but a dream: Methought I lay Watching the zenith, where the milky way Among the stars in virgin splendour pours; And travelling my eye, until the doors Of heaven appear'd to open for my flight, I became loth and fearful to alight From such high soaring by a downward glance: So kept me stedfast in that airy trance, Spreading imaginary pinions wide. When, presently, the stars began to glide, And faint away, before my eager view: At which I sigh'd that I could not pursue, And dropt my vision to the horizon's verge; And lo!

To commune with those orbs, once more I rais'd My sight right upward: Again I look'd, and, O ye deities, Who from Olympus watch our destinies! Whence that completed form of all completeness? Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness? Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, O Where Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair?

Meaning of "mountainside" in the English dictionary

Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun; Not—thy soft hand, fair sister! Unto what awful power shall I call? To what high fane? The wind out-blows Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion; 'Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed, Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed, Handfuls of daisies. Soon, as it seem'd, we left our journeying high, And straightway into frightful eddies swoop'd; Such as ay muster where grey time has scoop'd Huge dens and caverns in a mountain's side: There hollow sounds arous'd me, and I sigh'd To faint once more by looking on my bliss— I was distracted; madly did I kiss The wooing arms which held me, and did give My eyes at once to death: I ev'n dar'd to press Her very cheek against my crowned lip, And, at that moment, felt my body dip Into a warmer air: There was store Of newest joys upon that alp.

Sometimes A scent of violets, and blossoming limes, Loiter'd around us; then of honey cells, Made delicate from all white-flower bells; And once, above the edges of our nest, An arch face peep'd,—an Oread as I guess'd. Why not see, Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark, And stare them from me? But no, like a spark That needs must die, although its little beam Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream Fell into nothing—into stupid sleep.

And so it was, until a gentle creep, A careful moving caught my waking ears, And up I started: If an innocent bird Before my heedless footsteps stirr'd, and stirr'd In little journeys, I beheld in it A disguis'd demon, missioned to knit My soul with under darkness; to entice My stumblings down some monstrous precipice: Therefore I eager followed, and did curse The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse, Rock'd me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven!

These things, with all their comfortings, are given To my down-sunken hours, and with thee, Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea Of weary life. She weeps, And wonders; struggles to devise some blame; To put on such a look as would say, Shame On this poor weakness! At length, to break the pause, She said with trembling chance: Yet it is strange, and sad, alas!

That one who through this middle earth should pass Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave His name upon the harp-string, should achieve No higher bard than simple maidenhood, Singing alone, and fearfully,—how the blood Left his young cheek; and how he used to stray He knew not where; and how he would say, nay, If any said 'twas love: How a ring-dove Let fall a sprig of yew tree in his path; And how he died: Be rather in the trumpet's mouth,—anon Among the winds at large—that all may hearken!

Although, before the crystal heavens darken, I watch and dote upon the silver lakes Pictur'd in western cloudiness, that takes The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands, Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands With horses prancing o'er them, palaces And towers of amethyst,—would I so tease My pleasant days, because I could not mount Into those regions? The Morphean fount Of that fine element that visions, dreams, And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams Into its airy channels with so subtle, So thin a breathing, not the spider's shuttle, Circled a million times within the space Of a swallow's nest-door, could delay a trace, A tinting of its quality: Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick?

Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick For nothing but a dream? In that which becks Our ready minds to fellowship divine, A fellowship with essence; till we shine, Full alchemiz'd, and free of space. Behold The clear religion of heaven! Fold A rose leaf round thy finger's taperness, And soothe thy lips: Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs; Old ditties sigh above their father's grave; Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot; Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit, Where long ago a giant battle was; And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass In every place where infant Orpheus slept.

Feel we these things? But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone, My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone. Is there a bridle for this Proteus That turns and changes like his draughty seas? Or is there none, most popular of men, But when they mock us, that we mock again? 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?

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O love is the crooked thing, There is nobody wise enough To find out all that is in it, For he would be thinking of love. Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon. Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, One cannot begin it too soon. Poets with whom I learned my trade. They sang a drowsy song, Or snored, For all were full of wine and meat. We should be dazed and terror-struck, If we but saw in dreams that room, Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck That emptied all our days to come.

Since, tavern comrades, you have died, Maybe your images have stood, Mere bone and muscle thrown aside, Before that roomful or as good. What does he care if my heart break? I call for spade and horse and hound That we may harry him. Why should the faithfullest heart most love The bitter sweetness of false faces? Why must the lasting love what passes, Why are the gods by men betrayed? Even like these to rail and sweat Staring upon his sinewy thigh. She pulled the thread and bit the thread And made a golden gown, And wept because she had dreamt that I Was born to wear a crown.

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 fiddle and clarionet That there be no foot silent in the room Nor mouth from kissing, nor from wine unwet; Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb. In vain, in pain; the cataract still cries; The everlasting taper lights the gloom; All wisdom shut into his onyx eyes, Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb.

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 and this Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago; And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason, Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro, Riddled with light. 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 laughter, sprang again And so to the other tree at a bound.

Nor the tame will, nor timid brain, Nor heavy knitting of the brow Bred that fierce tooth and cleanly limb And threw him up to laugh on the bough; No government appointed him. It was an accident. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

O would that we had met When I had my burning youth! But I grow old among dreams, A weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams. O who could have foretold That the heart grows old? For who could have foretold That the heart grows old? I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day. 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 death. Your beauty can but leave among us Vague memories, nothing but memories.

Vague memories, nothing but memories, But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed. The certainty that I shall see that lady Leaning or standing or walking In the first loveliness of womanhood, And with the fervour of my youthful eyes, Has set me muttering like a fool. You are more beautiful than any one, And yet your body had a flaw: Your small hands were not beautiful, And I am afraid that you will run And paddle to the wrist In that mysterious, always brimming lake Where those What have obeyed the holy law paddle and are perfect.

The last stroke of midnight dies.

All day in the one chair From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged In rambling talk with an image of air: Vague memories, nothing but memories. 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, Climbed up my creaking stair.

They had read All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing Returned and yet unrequited love. They stood in the door and stood between My great wood lectern and the fire Till I could hear their hearts beating: One is a harlot, and one a child That never looked upon man with desire. And one, it may be, a queen. And after twenty years they laid In that tomb by him and her His son George, the astrologer; And Masons drove from miles away To scatter the Acacia spray Upon a melancholy man Who had ended where his breath began. He never found his rest ashore, Moping for one voyage more.

Where have they laid the sailor John? And yesterday the youngest son, A humorous, unambitious man, Was buried near the astrologer, Yesterday in the tenth year Since he who had been contented long. At all these death-beds women heard A visionary white sea-bird Lamenting that a man should die; And with that cry I have raised my cry.

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 pace as though their beds, Despite a dwindling and late-risen moon, Were distant still.

An old man cocked his ear. A rat or water-hen Splashed, or an otter slid into the stream. We are on the bridge; that shadow is the tower, And the light proves that he is reading still. The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved, An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil; And now he seeks in book or manuscript What he shall never find.

Why should not you Who know it all ring at his door, and speak Just truth enough to show that his whole life Will scarcely find for him a broken crust Of all those truths that are your daily bread; And when you have spoken take the roads again?

He wrote of me in that extravagant style He had learnt from pater, and to round his tale Said I was dead; and dead I choose to be. Sing me the changes of the moon once more; True song, though speech: And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must, Before the full moon, helpless as a worm. Sing out the song; sing to the end, and sing The strange reward of all that discipline.

All thought becomes an image and the soul Becomes a body: Body and soul cast out and cast away Beyond the visible world. They ran from cradle to cradle till at last Their beauty dropped out of the loneliness Of body and soul. It must be that the terror in their eyes Is memory or foreknowledge of the hour When all is fed with light and heaven is bare. And thereupon with aged, high-pitched voice Aherne laughed, thinking of the man within, His sleepless candle and laborious pen. And after that the crumbling of the moon.

Before the full It sought itself and afterwards the world. Because you are forgotten, half out of life, And never wrote a book, your thought is clear. Reformer, merchant, statesman, learned man, Dutiful husband, honest wife by turn, Cradle upon cradle, and all in flight and all Deformed because there is no deformity But saves us from a dream. And what of those That the last servile crescent has set free? When all the dough has been so kneaded up That it can take what form cook Nature fancies, The first thin crescent is wheeled round once more. Hunchback and Saint and Fool are the last crescents.

And then he laughed to think that what seemed hard Should be so simple — a bat rose from the hazels And circled round him with its squeaky cry, The light in the tower window was put out. 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 pure cold light in the sky Troubled his animal blood. Minnaloushe runs in the grass Lifting his delicate feet. Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?

When two close kindred meet. What better than call a dance? Maybe the moon may learn, Tired of that courtly fashion, A new dance turn. Minnaloushe creeps through the grass From moonlit place to place, The sacred moon overhead Has taken a new phase. Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils Will pass from change to change, And that from round to crescent, From crescent to round they range?

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass Alone, important and wise, And lifts to the changing moon His changing eyes. 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. God tries each man According to a different plan. I shall not cease to bless because I lay about me with the taws That night and morning I may thrash Greek Alexander from my flesh, Augustus Caesar, and after these That great rogue Alcibiades. To all that in your flesh have stood And blessed, I give my gratitude, Honoured by all in their degrees, But most to Alcibiades.

The Double Vision of Michael Robartes. Under blank eyes and fingers never still The particular is pounded till it is man. When had I my own will? O not since life began. Constrained, arraigned, baffled, bent and unbent By these wire-jointed jaws and limbs of wood, Themselves obedient, Knowing not evil and good; Obedient to some hidden magical breath.

They do not even feel, so abstract are they. So dead beyond our death, Triumph that we obey. 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 danced her life away, For now being dead it seemed That she of dancing dreamed. One lashed her tail; her eyes lit by the moon Gazed upon all things known, all things unknown, In triumph of intellect With motionless head erect.

Yet little peace he had, For those that love are sad. Little did they care who danced between, And little she by whom her dance was seen So she had outdanced thought. Body perfection brought, For what but eye and ear silence the mind With the minute particulars of mankind? In contemplation had those three so wrought Upon a moment, and so stretched it out That they, time overthrown, Were dead yet flesh and bone.

From Michael Robartes and the Dancer Could the impossible come to pass She would have time to turn her eyes, Her lover thought, upon the glass And on the instant would grow wise. Go pluck Athene by the hair; For what mere book can grant a knowledge With an impassioned gravity Appropriate to that beating breast, That vigorous thigh, that dreaming eye?

And may the Devil take the rest. And must no beautiful woman be Learned like a man?

I have heard said There is great danger in the body. Did God in portioning wine and bread Give man His thought or His mere body? I have principles to prove me right. It follows from this Latin text That blest souls are not composite, And that all beautiful women may Live in uncomposite blessedness, And lead us to the like — if they Will banish every thought, unless The lineaments that please their view When the long looking-glass is full, Even from the foot-sole think it too.

AND thus declared that Arab lady: He that crowed out eternity Thought to have crowed it in again. Maybe an image is too strong Or maybe is not strong enough. And the moon is wilder every minute. 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? 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 though The abounding gutter had been Helicon Or calumny a song.

So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb. 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 perned in the gyre, Between my hatred and desire. I saw my freedom won And all laugh in the sun. But soon a tear-drop started up, For aimless joy had made me stop Beside the little lake To watch a white gull take A bit of bread thrown up into the air; Now gyring down and perning there He splashed where an absurd Portly green-pated bird Shook off the water from his back; Being no more demoniac A stupid happy creature Could rouse my whole nature.

Yet I am certain as can be That every natural victory Belongs to beast or demon, That never yet had freeman Right mastery of natural things, And that mere growing old, that brings Chilled blood, this sweetness brought; Yet have no dearer thought Than that I may find out a way To make it linger half a day. O what a sweetness strayed Through barren Thebaid, Or by the Mareotic sea When that exultant Anthony And twice a thousand more Starved upon the shore And withered to a bag of bones! What had the Caesars but their thrones?

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 everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed; And for an hour I have walked and prayed Because of the great gloom that is in my mind. I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower, And-under the arches of the bridge, and scream In the elms above the flooded stream; Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull And later had much trouble from a fool, While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray, Being fatherless could have her way Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man. And many a poor man that has roved, Loved and thought himself beloved, From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree That all her thoughts may like the linnet be, And have no business but dispensing round Their magnanimities of sound, Nor but in merriment begin a chase, Nor but in merriment a quarrel. O may she live like some green laurel Rooted in one dear perpetual place. My mind, because the minds that I have loved, The sort of beauty that I have approved, Prosper but little, has dried up of late, Yet knows that to be choked with hate May well be of all evil chances chief.

An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. How but in custom and in ceremony Are innocence and beauty born? Mere dreams, mere dreams! O what if gardens where the peacock strays With delicate feet upon old terraces, Or else all Juno from an urn displays Before the indifferent garden deities; O what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease And Childhood a delight for every sense, But take our greatness with our violence?

What if the glory of escutcheoned doors, And buildings that a haughtier age designed, The pacing to and fro on polished floors Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined With famous portraits of our ancestors; What if those things the greatest of mankind Consider most to magnify, or to bless, But take our greatness with our bitterness?

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, The sound of the rain or sound Of every wind that blows; The stilted water-hen Crossing Stream again Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows; A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone, A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth, A candle and written page.

Synonyms and antonyms of mountainside in the English dictionary of synonyms

Benighted travellers From markets and from fairs Have seen his midnight candle glimmering. Two men have founded here. A man-at-arms Gathered a score of horse and spent his days In this tumultuous spot, Where through long wars and sudden night alarms His dwindling score and he seemed castaways Forgetting and forgot; And I, that after me My bodily heirs may find, To exalt a lonely mind, Befitting emblems of adversity.

A bit of an embroidered dress Covers its wooden sheath. Chaucer had not drawn breath When it was forged. Yet if no change appears No moon; only an aching heart Conceives a changeless work of art. And what if my descendants lose the flower Through natural declension of the soul, Through too much business with the passing hour, Through too much play, or marriage with a fool? May this laborious stair and this stark tower Become a roofless min that the owl May build in the cracked masonry and cry Her desolation to the desolate sky.

An affable Irregular, A heavily-built Falstaffian 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 national uniform, Stand at my door, and I complain Of the foul weather, hail and rain, A pear-tree broken by the storm. I count those feathered balls of soot The moor-hen guides upon the stream. To silence the envy in my thought; And turn towards my chamber, caught In the cold snows of a dream. 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 state. We are closed in, and the key is turned On our uncertainty; somewhere A man is killed, or a house burned, Yet no cleat fact to be discerned: Come build in he empty house of the stare. A barricade of stone or of wood; Some fourteen days of civil war; Last night they trundled down the road That dead young soldier in his blood: Come build in the empty house of the stare.

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 unchangeable, A glittering sword out of the east. A puff of wind And those white glimmering fragments of the mist sweep by. Their legs long, delicate and slender, aquamarine their eyes, Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs.

The ladies close their musing eyes. The cloud-pale unicorns, the eyes of aquamarine, The quivering half-closed eyelids, the rags of cloud or of lace, Or eyes that rage has brightened, arms it has made lean, Give place to an indifferent multitude, give place To brazen hawks. I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair Wonder how many times I could have proved my worth In something that all others understand or share; But O!

The abstract joy, The half-read wisdom of daemonic images, Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy. Where got I that truth? Out of nothing it came, Out of the forest loam, Out of dark night where lay The crowns of Nineveh. 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.

Echoes from the Past

I knew that horse-play, knew it for a murderous thing. Stretch out your limbs and sleep a long Saturnian sleep; I have loved you better than my soul for all my words, And there is none so fit to keep a watch and keep Unwearied eyes upon those horrible green birds. A sixty-year-old smiling public man. I dream of a Ledaean body, bent Above a sinking fire. She stands before me as a living child. And I though never of Ledaean kind Had pretty plumage once — enough of that, Better to smile on all that smile, and show There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow. What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap Honey of generation had betrayed, And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape As recollection or the drug decide, Would think her Son, did she but see that shape With sixty or more winters on its head, A compensation for the pang of his birth, Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

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 upon a fiddle-stick or strings What a star sang and careless Muses heard: Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird. 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 blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? WHEN all works 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.

It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad. The south wind brought it longing, and the east wind despair, The west wind made it pitiful, and the north wind afraid. It feared to give its love a hurt with all the tempest there; It feared the hurt that she could give and therefore it went mad. The Heart behind its rib laughed out. Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild. O but her heart would break to learn my thoughts are far away. O let her choose a young man now and all for his wild sake.

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 after kept it from decay; And let all base ambition be, For intellect would make us proud And pride bring in impurity: The three old rascals laugh aloud.

Words were but wasted breath; One dear hope had he: The inclemency Of that or the next winter would be death. How it is whirled about, Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach, Until it plunge into the sun; And there, free and yet fast, Being both Chance and Choice, Forget its broken toys And sink into its own delight at last. And I call up MacGregor from the grave, For in my first hard springtime we were friends.

Although of late estranged. I thought him half a lunatic, half knave, And told him so, but friendship never ends; And what if mind seem changed, And it seem changed with the mind, When thoughts rise up unbid On generous things that he did And I grow half contented to be blind! He had much industry at setting out, Much boisterous courage, before loneliness Had driven him crazed; For meditations upon unknown thought Make human intercourse grow less and less; They are neither paid nor praised. But names are nothing. What matter who it be, So that his elements have grown so fine The fume of muscatel Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy No living man can drink from the whole wine.

I have mummy truths to tell Whereat the living mock, Though not for sober ear, For maybe all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock. THE light of evening, Lissadell, Great windows open to the south, Two girls in silk kimonos, both Beautiful, one a gazelle. Many a time I think to seek One or the other out and speak Of that old Georgian mansion, mix pictures of the mind, recall That table and the talk of youth, Two girls in silk kimonos, both Beautiful, one a gazelle.

Dear shadows, now you know it all, All the folly of a fight With a common wrong or right. The innocent and the beautiful. Have no enemy but time; Arise and bid me strike a match And strike another till time catch; Should the conflagration climb, Run till all the sages know. We the great gazebo built, They convicted us of guilt; Bid me strike a match and blow. Who can distinguish darkness from the soul.

Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war? A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more? Endure that toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;.

The finished man among his enemies? I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest. WE that have done and thought, That have thought and done, Must ramble, and thin out Like milk spilt on a stone.

The rattle of pebbles on the shore Under the receding wave. My great-grandfather shared A pot-house bench with Oliver Goldsmith once. Oliver Goldsmith sang what he had seen, Roads full of beggars, cattle in the fields, But never saw the trefoil stained with blood, The avenging leaf those fields raised up against it. A voice Soft as the rustle of a reed from Cloyne That gathers volume; now a thunder-clap. They walked the roads Mimicking what they heard, as children mimic; They understood that wisdom comes of beggary.

CRAZED through much child-bearing The moon is staggering in the sky; Moon-struck by the despairing Glances of her wandering eye We grope, and grope in vain, For children born of her pain. Children dazed or dead! What manhood led the dance! Fly-catchers of the moon, Our hands are blenched, our fingers seem But slender needles of bone; Blenched by that malicious dream They are spread wide that each May rend what comes in reach.

Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveller; he Served human liberty. Fool, rascal, knave, That I have not been, And yet upon my breast A myriad heads have lain. THE threefold terror of love; a fallen flare Through the hollow of an ear; Wings beating about the room; The terror of all terrors that I bore The Heavens in my womb. Had I not found content among the shows Every common woman knows, Chimney corner, garden walk, Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes And gather all the talk?

WHERE had her sweetness gone? What fanatics invent In this blind bitter town, Fantasy or incident Not worth thinking of, put her in a rage. I had forgiven enough That had forgiven old age.

All lives that has lived; So much is certain; Old sages were not deceived: Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring. But I have straightened out Ruin, wreck and wrack; I toiled long years and at length Came to so deep a thought I can summon back All their wholesome strength. What heads shake or nod? I sought my betters: Great hatred, little room, Maimed us at the start. Some stupid thing that I had done Made my attention stray.

Repentance keeps my heart impure; But what am I that dare Fancy that I can Better conduct myself or have more Sense than a common man? What motion of the sun or stream Or eyelid shot the gleam That pierced my body through? What made me live like these that seem Self-born, born anew? A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown About the sky; where that is clear of cloud Brightness remains; a brighter star shoots down; What shudders run through all that animal blood?

What is this sacrifice? Can someone there Recall the Cretan barb that pierced a star? Rich foliage that the starlight glittered through, A frenzied crowd, and where the branches sprang A beautiful seated boy; a sacred bow; A woman, and an arrow on a string; A pierced boy, image of a star laid low. That woman, the Great Mother imaging, Cut out his heart. Some master of design Stamped boy and tree upon Sicilian coin. An age is the reversal of an age: When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone, We lived like men that watch a painted stage.

What matter for the scene, the scene once gone: It had not touched our lives. But popular rage, Hysterica passion dragged this quarry down. None shared our guilt; nor did we play a part Upon a painted stage when we devoured his heart. Come, fix upon me that accusing eye. I thirst for accusation.

Endymion, Book I, [A thing of beauty is a joy for ever]

All that was sung. All that was said in Ireland is a lie Bred out of the contagion of the throng, Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die. Leave nothing but the nothings that belong To this bare soul, let all men judge that can Whether it be an animal or a man. The rest I pass, one sentence I unsay. No civil rancour torn the land apart. A slow low note and an iron bell. What brought them there so far from their home. Niamh that rode on it; lad and lass That sat so still and played at the chess? What but heroic wantonness?

And all alone comes riding there The King that could make his people stare, Because he had feathers instead of hair. That were a cowardly song, Wander in dreams no more; What if the Church and the State Are the mob that howls at the door! Wine shall run thick to the end, Bread taste sour. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent?

Eyes spiritualised by death can judge, I cannot, but I am not content. All the Olympians; a thing never known again. SAY that the men of the old black tower, Though they but feed as the goatherd feeds, Their money spent, their wine gone sour, Lack nothing that a soldier needs, That all are oath-bound men: Those banners come not in. There in the tomb stand the dead upright, But winds come up from the shore: They shake when the winds roar, Old bones upon the mountain shake. If he died long ago Why do you dread us so? There in the tomb drops the faint moonlight, But wind comes up from the shore: Stand we on guard oath-bound!

There in the tomb the dark grows blacker, But wind comes up from the shore: He rose the latch and went upstairs And found an empty room. The Colonel went out sailing. She may be all alone there, For who can say? The Colonel met a pedlar, Agreed their clothes to swop, And bought the grandest jewelry In a Galway shop, Instead of thread and needle put jewelry in the pack, Bound a thong about his hand, Hitched it on his back. And he went in and she went on And both climbed up the stair, And O he was a clever man, For he his slippers wore. And when they came to the top stair He ran on ahead, His wife he found and the rich man In the comfort of a bed.

And there at all street-corners A man with a pistol stood, And the rich man had paid them well To shoot the Colonel dead; But they threw down their pistols And all men heard them swear That they could never shoot a man Did all that for the poor. THAT crazed girl improvising her music. Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,. Her soul in division from itself Climbing, falling She knew not where, Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship, Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing Heroically lost, heroically found.

I have found something worse To meditate on. A King had some beautiful cousins. But where are they gone?

Battered to death in a cellar, And he stuck to his throne. Last night I lay on the mountain.

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