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.

William Butler Yeats
Irish poet and dramatist
One of the greatest poets of the 20th century,
Yeats turned to pagan Ireland for his inspiration.
In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The main themes William Butler Yeats treated in his poems are Irish nationalism, Celtic mythology, love, ageing and mysticism. But the last mentioned seems to be interpenetrating all his work. Just as Yeats himself once said: “The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.” Besides the poems this theme is elaborated in the best way in Yeats´ book A Vision, and also greatly revealed in his Essays and dramas. In this paper I would like to describe Yeats´ mystical opinions and to present parts of his poems where the mystical and occult occur.

For better understanding of Yeats´ choose to write about mystics it would be good to mention some facts and backgrounds which formed his mind. His mother’s family, the Pollexfens, were known for their eccentricities manifested by, for our example, an interest in astrology and magic. The unbelief and arguments of Yeats´ father against Christian belief led Yeats to investigate informal and exotic ones. He welcomed any teaching which spoke of supersensual experiences, or gave him a background for the visions which came to him “ from beyond the mind ”. Aged 20 he was among the founders of a group devoted to the occult, the Dublin Hermetic Society. When the family went to London in 1887, he joined a famous mystical society of his days, the Theosophical Society. Yeats was as a visionary insisted on surrounding himself with images. Just magic and its imaginative life appealed to him. The age of science was not interesting to him, he was more attracted by astrology than astronomy. He began to study such visionary traditions as the Platonic, the Neoplatonic, the Swedenborgian, the alchemical, the Tibetan Mysteries, Buddhism and other beliefs.

He was not only a theoretic reader but he was also eager to verify many supernatural phenomenas. He had experimented with telepathy and clairvoyance with his uncle George Pollexfen. In 1890 Yeats joined Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the organisation which incorporated traditional European Cabalistic Magic and astrology. This society enabled him constant experimentation and expression. He was learning magical and esoteric symbols, creating interrelationships between the seasons, various parts of body, the five elements, numbers, etc. Yeats combined this knowledge with his own experiences and poetic genius and made his own system of symbols. Finally, he was able to express in writing what he was envisioning. He treats such themes as questions of life and death, eternity, immortality, change and changelessness of things and all the world.

As mentioned, Yeats was a visionary so we can look at first to the places in the poems where he speaks directly about his visions and dreams. There are various kinds of these visions, some come out from the history, some speak about the life after death, and many reveal the images of fairies and myths form the “Great Memory”. Basically, there are two types of such visions. One is when he himself wants to envision or call for it using own will (sometimes he put special flowers beside his bed). The second is when he is called or enchanted by a vision or dream practically without his will or control.

And I call up McGregor from the grave, / for in my firs hard springtime we were friends (The Tower)

I saw a staring virgin stand / Where holy Dionysus died, And tear the heart out of his side, / And lay the heart upon her hand / And bear that beating heart away (Two Songs from a Play)

When I had laid it on the floor / I went to blow the fire aflame, / But something rustled on the floor, / And someone called me by my name: / It had become a glimmering girl / With apple blossom in her hair / Who called me by my name and ran / And faded through the brightening air. (The Song of Wandering Aengus)

It was the dream itself enchanted me / Character isolated by a deed / To engross the present and dominate memory. (The Circus Animals´ Desertion)

The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears / Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes, / And the clash of fallen horseman and the cries / Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears. ( The Valley of the Black Pig)

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 (The Cold Heaven)

Numerous visions were connected with Yeats´ leading idea of “gyres”, the cones that spiral together and symbolise objectivity and subjectivity of the world. These idea was practically collaborated with his wife through her automatic writing and connection with a ghost named Leo Africanus. The gyres give the image of a single circle when looking down on them. This circle represents the moon and the twenty-eight phases of the moon which are closely related to the progression of time and world history. The new and full moon are the periods where time begins end ends. However, it is not an end in the right sense of the word, it is actually a beginning of a new cycle. The phases in between are the growth and evolution of the human soul over time. The cycle lasts two thousand years and each period is dominated by a single civilisation and its own prevailing myth. The present one begun with the birth of Christ and now, as Yeats says, is already in the period of disintegration. Thus the end of our cycle will come in the year of 2000. He calls this time “The Second Coming”. It might remind us the currently appearing ideas of the suggested coming of the age of “Aquarius”. In Per Amica Silentia Lunae, Yeats says that the motion of gyres and therefore the fate of a man or the world is mathematically predestined. He also adds that therefore the coming of such personalities as Buddha, Christ or Napoleon could have been predicted. All these ideas are mainly worked out in A Vision but, of course, they also appeared in the Yeats´poems:

Though I had long perned in the gyre,/ Between my hatred and desire,/ I saw my freedom won/ And all laugh in the sun. ( Demon and Beast)

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 toward Bethlehem to be born ? ( The Second Coming)

but man’s life is thought, / And he, despite his terror, cannot cease / Ravening through century after century / ... / Egypt and Greece, goodbye, and good-bye, Rome ! (Supernatural Songs)

The Gyres ! the gyres ! Old Rocky Face, look forth; / Things tought too long can be no longer thought, / For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth ( The Gyres)

All things fall and are built again, / And those that build them again are gay. ( Lapis Lazuli)

Together with the idea of cyclic history comes to Yeats the idea of cyclic repeating of life and death, the reincarnation of souls. He also speaks about what happens after death, describing the process of return of the soul to the cosmic trance (Yeats also calls it Anima Mundi or “artifice of eternity”), from which it sprang. The body is looked on as an animal part of a man full of desires which should be purified (this purification is symbolised by a “sages standing in God’s holy fire” who “consume” desires “away”).

O sages standing in God’s holy fire /.../ Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is; and gather me / Into the artifice of eternity ( Sailing to Byzantium)

Yeats shared the idea of reincarnating of a soul through all worldly things, not only within the human being. This idea actually refers to his view at the world or the universe as a view in the very modern term. It is the way of looking at the universe as a whole interconnected system of energies, always changing but never disappearing. Thus the first example below refers to that particular idea and the next ones show other parts of poems treating the cycle of life and death:

I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung / The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough / Among my leaves in times out of mind: / I became a rush that horses tread : / I became a man, a hater of the wind (He Thinks of His Past Greatness When a Part of the Constellations of Heaven)

Many times he died, / Many times rose again. (Death)

Many times man lives and dies / Between his two eternities, / That of race and that of soul (Under Ben Bulben)

Although Yeats saw and felt around himself the unchangeable order of dying and fading of temporary things, he was looking for something what wouldn’t be affected by this change, the immortality and eternity. That was the world where the imagination comes from. He said that the world of imagination is just the eternal world, in opposite to the world of reason, which is the world of lies and cheat, phantasm falling apart. It is, not surprisingly, a very similar idea to the ideas of William Blake, and also to the eastern idea of illusion of the material world (Maya). The source of all imagination was for Yeats already mentioned Anima Mundi, the eternal soul of the universe.

He also spoke about the Great Memory (or Great Mind) from which every images and truth spring. He wrote in one of his essays how surprised he was whenever he found that an image that came “out of beyond [his] mind” was already described by some previous poet or writer. (That phenomena was later studied by Jung who called it the Collective Unconscious, or by Timothy Leary who explained it as a product of our DNA, which contains the heritage of life’s evolution from day one. Currently, it is a place of study of English biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who calls it a theory of “morphic fields”, and who widened that phenomena practically to all living beings.) Yeats said, that therefore a poet and his imagination is a medium of the truth coming from the place of wisdom to the world. For him every true poet was also a prophet. And he called together those “ who have sought more than is in rain or dew” to reveal the wisdom to people. However he felt that the modern time was just against the possibility of imaginative life, what he felt as a decline and prophesied the “Second Coming”.

Whose images, in the Great Memory stored, / Come with loud cry and panting breast / To break upon a sleeper’s rest (The Tower)

Things out of perfection sail, / And all their swelling canvas wear (Old Tom Again)

Those masterful images because complete / Grew in pure mind (The Circus Animals´Desertion)

Though leaves are many, the root is one; / ... / I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; / Now I may wither into the truth. (The Coming of Wisdom with Me)

Though like a road / That men pass over / My body makes no moan / But sings on: / All things remain in God. (Crazy Jane on God)

Yeats’ desire and striving for knowledge and truth lasted through all his life. Although he was sceptic in belief that a man could reach the final truth or knowledge during this stage on the Earth, Yeats was vivid and enthusiastic till the end of his life. He wanted to find and know his true self, not only the ”mask”. It is said that many poets wrote their best poetry in their youth. However, Yeats logically, as he was progressing in the effort to be better and better, wrote many of his best poems at the end of his life. Practically, he followed the ideal pattern of human life, the idea of the wise old age.

He achieved the wished aims of his life: he became famous, had money, old house, wife, daughter, son and good friends. He envisioned much of the wisdom, he knew many of the life after death. Yet he was still awaiting something to come, he was asking “What Then ?” .

” The work is done.” Grown old age he thought, / ” According to my boyish plan; / Let the fools rage, I swered in naught, / Something to perfection brought”; / But louder sang that ghost, ” What then ? ” (What Than ?)

And I would find myself and not an image. (Ego Dominus Tuus)

Although Yeats suffered with diseases in his old age, he was still able to look at the world with a joy. He blessed the worldly things. He was reaching the similar he liked, the life of wise and mad sages. Despite the fact, that many times in his life he was feeling sadness and suffering, his mystical attitude enabled him to attain some states of ecstasy and blissful moments.

I pray … / That I may seem, though I die old, / A foolish, passionate man. ( A Prayer for Old Age)

Know why an old man should be mad. (Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad ?)

My body of a sudden blazed; / And twenty minutes more or less / It seemed, so great my happiness, / That was blessed and could bless. (Vacillation)

We must laugh and we must sing, / We are blest by everything, / Everything we look upon is blest. (A Dialogue of Self and Soul)

The Last Poems display perfectly the unbelievable energy of this old man. This energy I think did not spring only from Yeats’ mystical experiences but also from the fact that he was till the end of his life doing what he liked and ever had wished to do. He wanted to reveal his attained knowledge and wisdom more and more clearly. He belonged to a few people who do not regret their life. In his last unfinished essay he wrote:

I know for certain that my time will not be long. ... I am happy, and I think full of an energy, of an energy I had despaired of. It seems to me that I have found what I wanted.

I have mentioned only a few parts concerning the mysticism of Yeats’poems and life in this essay. Anyhow, the mentioned ones are still sufficient to make the reader convinced thatYeats’ entirely described will of the person, striving for wisdom, makes his poems interesting till these days. They are full of appreciating honesty and personal feelings. It is not a cheap poetry of kitsch images of nature or love, it is a poetry charged with deep thoughts, poet’s personality, wisdom and an effort to transmit it to the readers. Nevertheless, despite the fact that Yeats wanted to express himself clearly, many of his ideas in the poems are sometimes hard to understand for me. I think that to a reader who is not interested in mysticism they must be (similarly to Blake’s poems) quite obscure.

A Cradle Song

Aedh gives his Beloved certain Rhymes

Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge

Aedh Laments the Loss of Love

Aedh pleads with the Elemental Powers

Aedh tells of a Valley full of Lovers

Aedh tells of the perfect Beauty

Aedh tells of the Rose in his Heart

Aedh thinks of those who have spoken Evil of his Beloved

Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Aedh wishes his Beloved were dead

A Poet to his Beloved

The Blessed

Breasal the Fisherman

The Cap and Bells

The Everlasting Voices

The Fiddler of Dooney

Hanrahan laments because of his Wanderings

Hanrahan reproves the Curlew

Hanrahan speaks to the Lovers of his Songs in coming Days

The Heart of the Woman

The Hosting of the Sidhe

The Host of the Air

Into the Twilight

Michael Robartes asks Forgiveness because of his many Moods

Michael Robartes bids his Beloved be at Peace

Michael Robartes remembers forgotten Beauty

Mongan laments the Change that has come upon him and his Beloved

Mongan thinks of his past Greatness

The Moods

The Poet pleads with his Friend for old Friends

The Secret Rose

The Song of the old Mother

The Song of Wandering Aengus

To my Heart, bidding it have no Fear

The Travail of Passion

The Valley of the Black Pig

Down by the Salley Gardens

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, with her did not agree.
 
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

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.
 
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
 
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

When You are Old

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 your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
 
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

The Song of Wandering Aengus

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 out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
 
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
 
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

The Cap and Bells

The jester walked in the garden:
The garden had fallen still;
He bade his soul rise upward
And stand on her window-sill.
 
It rose in a straight blue garment,
When owls began to call:
It had grown wise-tongued by thinking
Of a quiet and light footfall;
 
But the young queen would not listen;
She rose in her pale night-gown;
She drew in the heavy casement
And pushed the latches down.
 
He bade his heart go to her,
When the owls called out no more;
In a red and quivering garment
It sang to her through the door.
 
It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming
Of a flutter of flower-like hair;
But she took up her fan from the table
And waved it off on the air.
 
`I have cap and bells,' he pondered,
`I will send them to her and die';
And when the morning whitened
He left them where she went by.
 
She laid them upon her bosom,
Under a cloud of her hair,
And her red lips sang them a love-song
Till stars grew out of the air.
 
She opened her door and her window,
And the heart and the soul came through,
To her right hand came the red one,
To her left hand came the blue.
 
They set up a noise like crickets,
A chattering wise and sweet,
And her hair was a folded flower
And the quiet of love in her feet.

He hears the Cry of the Sedge

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 girdle of light is unbound,
Your breast will not lie by the breast
Of your beloved in sleep.

The Wheel

 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-time has not come ---
Nor know that what disturbs our blood
Is but our longing for the tomb.

The Secret Rose

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 deep
Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise
In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;
Till vain frenzy woke and he died; and him
Who met Fand walking among flaming dew
By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;
And him who drove the gods out of their liss,
And till a hundred morns had flowered red
Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;
And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,
And sought through lands and islands numberless years,
Until he found, with laughter and with tears,
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress. I, too, await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

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:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.

The Folly of Being Comforted

One that is ever kind said yesterday:
`Your well-belovéd'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 seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience.'
                             Heart cries, `No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild summer was in her gaze.
 
O heart! O heart! If she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.

No Second Troy

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 equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being as she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

On Hearing that the Students of our New University have joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature

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?

September 1913

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 pray and save;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
 
Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
 
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
 
Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry `Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave.

The Magi

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-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

Beggar to Beggar Cried

`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 wife and house
To rid me of the devil in my shoes,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
`And the worse devil that is between my thighs.'
 
`And though I'd marry with a comely lass,
She need not be too comely -- let it pass,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
`But there's a devil in a looking-glass.'
 
`Nor should she be too rich, because the rich
Are driven by wealth as beggars by the itch,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
`And cannot have a humorous happy speech.'
 
`And there I'll grow respected at my ease,
And hear among the garden's nightly peace,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
`The wind-blown clamour of the barnacle geese.'

`Lonely the seabird lies at her rest'

Lonely the seabird lies at her rest,
Blown like a down-blenched parcel of spray
Upon the wind, or follows her prey
Under a great wave's hollowing crest.
 
God has not appeared to the birds.
 
The ger-eagle has chosen his part
In blue-deep of the upper air
Where one-eyed day can meet his stare;
He is content with his savage heart.
 
God has not appeared to the birds.
 
But where have last year's cygnets gone?
The lake is empty: why do they fling
White wing out beside white wing?
What can a swan need but a swan?
 
God has not appeared to the birds.

An Irish Airman Foresees his Death

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 likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
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.

The Collar-Bone of a Hare

Would I could cast a sail upon 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 best thing is
To change my loves while dancing
And pay but a kiss for a kiss.
 
I would find by the edge of that water
The collar-bone of a hare
Worn thin by the lapping of water,
And pierce it through with a gimlet, and stare
At the old bitter world where they marry in churches,
And laugh over the untroubled water
At all who marry in churches,
Through the thin white bone of a hare.

Memory

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.

Easter 1916

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 awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club;
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
 
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingéd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
 
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream,
Changed minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of it all.
 
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse ---
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

The Second Coming

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.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
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?

Sailing to Byzantium

I

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 all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

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
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

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 fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shalll 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 a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Leda and the Swan

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 terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
 
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
                     Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Crazy Jane on God

That lover of a night
Came when he would,
Went in the dawning light
Whether I would or no;
Men come, men go;
All things remain in God.
 
Banners choke the sky;
Men-at-arms tread;
Armoured horses neigh
Where the great battle was
In the narrow pass:
All things remain in God.
 
Before their eyes a house
That from childhood stood
Uninhabited, ruinous,
Suddenly lit up
From door to top:
All things remain in God.
 
I had wild Jack for a lover;
Though like a road
That men pass over
My body makes no moan
But sings on:
All things remain in God.

Three Things

`O cruel Death, give three things back,'
Sang a bone upon the shore;
`A child found all a child can lack,
Whether of pleasure or of rest,
Upon the abundance of my breast':
A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.
 
`Three dear things that women know,'
Sang a bone upon the shore;
`A man but if I held him so
When my body was alive
Found all the pleasure that life gave':
A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.
 
`The third thing that I think of yet,'
Sang a bone upon the shore;
`Is that morning when I met
Face to face my rightful man
And did after stretch and yawn':
A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.

What Then?

His chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
`What then?' sang Plato's ghost. `What then?'
 
Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
`What then?' sang Plato's ghost. `What then?'
 
All his happier dreams came true -
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
Poets and Wits about him drew;
`What then?' sang Plato's ghost. `What then?'
 
`The work is done,' grown old he thought,
`According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought';
But louder sang that ghost, `What then?'

The Great Day

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar on horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

The Pilgrim

I fasted for some forty days on bread and buttermilk,
For passing round the bottle with girls in rags or silk,
In country shawl or Paris cloak, had put my wits astray,
And what's the good of women, for all that they can say
Is fol de rol de rolly O.
 
Round Lough Derg's holy island I went upon the stones,
I prayed at all the Stations upon my marrow-bones,
And there I found an old man, and though I prayed all day
And that old man beside me, nothing would he say
But fol de rol de rolly O.
 
All know that all the dead in the world about that place are stuck,
And that should mother seek her son she'd have but little luck
Because the fires of Purgatory have ate their shapes away;
I swear to God I questioned them, and all they had to say
Was fol de rol de rolly O.
 
A great black ragged bird appeared when I was in the boat;
Some twenty feet from tip to tip had it stretched rightly out,
With flopping and with flapping it made a great display,
But I never stopped to question, what could the boatman say
But fol de rol de rolly O.
 
Now I am in the public-house and lean upon the wall,
So come in rags or come in silk, in cloak or country shawl,
And come with learned lovers or with what men you may,
For I can put the whole lot down, and all I have to say
Is fol de rol de rolly O.

Long-Legged Fly

That civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post;
Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps are spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand under his head.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.
 
That the topless towers be burnt
And men recall that face,
Move gently if move you must
In this lonely place.
She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,
That nobody looks; her feet
Practise a tinker shuffle
Picked up on the street.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
Her mind moves upon silence.
 
That girls at puberty may find
The first Adam in their thought,
Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,
Keep those children out.
There on that scaffolding reclines
Michael Angelo.
With no more sound than the mice make
His hand moves to and fro.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.

John Kinsella's Lament for Mrs Mary Moore.

A bloody and a sudden end,
  Gunshot or a noose,
For Death who takes what man would keep,
  Leaves what man would lose,
He might have had my sister,
  My cousins by the score,
But nothing satisfied the fool
  But my dear Mary Moore,
None other knows what pleasures man
  At table or in bed.
What shall I do for pretty girls
  Now my old bawd is dead?
 
Though stiff to strike a bargain
  Like an old Jew man,
Her bargain stuck we laughed and talked
  And emptied many a can;
And O! but she had stories,
  Though not for the priest's ear,
To keep the soul of man alive,
  Banish age and care,
And being old she put a skin
  On everything she said.
What shall I do for pretty girls
  Now my old bawd is dead?
 
The priests have got a book that says
  But for Adam's sin
Eden's Garden would be there
  And I there within.
No expectation fails there,
  No pleasing habit ends,
No man grows old, no girl grows cold,
  But friends walk by friends.
Who quarrels over halfpennies
  That plucks the trees for bread?
What shall I do for pretty girls
  Now my old bawd is dead?

From `Under Ben Bulben'

Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
 
          Cast a cold eye
          On life, on death.
          Horseman, pass by!

The Stolen Child

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 stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can
       understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can
      understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can
      understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can
        understand.

The Stolen Child is a poem by William Butler Yeats, published in 1889 in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems.

The poem was written in 1886 and is considered to be one of Yeats' more notable early poems. The poem is based on Irish legend and concerns faeries beguiling a child to come away with them. Yeats had a great interest in pagan Irish legends about faeries resulting in his publication of Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry in 1888 and Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland in 1892. The places mentioned in the poem are in Sligo where Yeats spent much of his childhood.

The poem reflects the early influence of Romantic literature and Pre-Raphaelite verse.

The poem was first published in the Irish Monthly in December 1886. The poem was then published in a compilation of work by several Irish poets Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland in 1888 with several critics praising the poem. It was later published in his first book of poetry The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems as well as Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry.

The poem was set to music and recorded by Loreena McKennitt on her 1985 debut album Elemental. Subsequently, additional musical versions were recorded by the folk rock group The Waterboys, appearing on their 1988 album Fisherman's Blues, with portions of the poem spoken by Tomas McKeown, and Heather Alexander on her 1994 album Wanderlust.

Every parent who has small children knows how difficult it is to get the little critters settled down when it's time for bed. Down through the centuries, parents of many nations have each developed their own unique ways of bringing peace to the ritual of bedtime.

Our Celtic ancestors, long ago, invented a method to tame the kiddies that many feel has worked wonders in this regard. It is the legend of the Changelings. Many of you have, no doubt, heard stories about the "little people." Some parents call them trolls, others refer to them as leprechauns, and still others speak about the "faery folk."

The legend demands that children always obey their parents when it comes time to go to bed. They are to tuck themselves in quickly, close their little eyes, and quietly scurry off to dreamland. Should they, for any noticeable time, tend to resist the call for sleep and quietness, they run the risk of being carried off to faeryland, where the faeries will keep them prisoners forever. These "naughty" children, according to the legend, will no longer be able to see their parents, and in their place the little people will leave a "Changeling."

In essence, a Changeling is the body of a child that no longer has the "kid" inside. The body walks, talks, goes to school---but the child inside lives somewhere else, far from waking awareness. The children who heard of this legend apparently had such belief in it that there seldom was a problem going to sleep, ever again, after the legend wove its spell.

Parents sometimes do cruel things, in the dispatch of their role as parents.  There are traumas, belief systems that inhibit growth, cruel viewpoints that are designed to manipulate little minds, etc.  We invent monsters to intimidate our kids, and then spend years trying to convince them that monsters are not real.

Forgetting about or casting off an important part of childhood (like spiritual guides and playmates) can constitute a major trauma in the life of a young person. For a beautiful visualization of this process, one needs only to check out a copy of the movie "Heart and Souls," released some years ago (usually available in any video store). The whole story plot of the film
centers around the subject matter we are discussing here.

To forget the magical part of self is to lose the essence of what it means to be young and alive. Many people fill psychiatric couches today, looking for missing components in their lives--events and occurrences that might have resulted in huge levels of depression and emptiness they feel later in life. Though every life has its bumps and bruises, and each one takes its toll---few people fully comprehend how badly they were injured when they decided, in a moment of time, to let go of their imagination.

When parents use children as surrogate spouses, or place demands upon their little psyches that require them to prematurely become adults, the "child part" of them departs.  From then on, they function as the parents want---but a part of them leaves.  The story of Peter Pan, with its many references to "The Lost Boys," is a perfect example of this.  Those boys, living in Never-Never Land, were children of trauma and heartbreak.  Some of them abandoned, and others driven away, they run off to an etheric refuge of their own making.  

There are many who come to me, and tell me about gaping holes in their memories of childhood.   When they do, I know that they are speaking about the empty spaces vacated by a "Stolen Child."  As the poem says, their world had become more full of weeping than that child could understand.  So.......parts of that child departed, leaving only a blank space.

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

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 out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

 

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

 

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

This poem also receives mention in the book Illuminatus, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. They reverse the order, talking about the Golden Apples of the Sun and Silver Apples of the Moon. The Golden Apple symbolizes the Golden Apple of Discord which Eris (Goddess of Chaos) threw. The other Gods and Goddesses did not invite her to a party because of Her reputation, so she threw the Golden Apple which said Kallisti (To the Prettiest One) which cracked the holy punchbowl which caused the goddesses to start throwing punch around and pulling each other's hair which caused Zeus to calm things down and appoint Paris the Arbiter who named Afrodite the Prettiest One who maneuvered events so Paris could have Helen of Sparta which started the Trojan War, the first war among men. Do you believe that?
In this poem Yeats brilliantly describes an encounter with this archetypal Goddess figure, often seen as a glimmering girl. The narrator first does a magical ritual to evoke Her. The ritual works, and Goddess appears in the form of a glimmering girl with apple blossoms in her hair. However, as She tends to do, she then runs into the brightening air, calling the narrator to follow, conjuring images of walking through long green appled grass for eternity with the Living Goddess. Note that he has not found Her at the end of the poem.

This poem was mentioned in "The Bridges of Madison County." In the book i believe that the author is showing the comparison between the characters in the book, and the people in the poem. The poem is about a boy who finds a girl who is perfect for him, when he least expects it. When they are together, they are perfect and things are great. The last two lines show that although these two people love each other, they are from different worlds, and cannot be together.

Listen to it at this website http://librivox.org/the-song-of-wandering-aengus-by-william-butler-yeats/ using mp3

NO SECOND TROY

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 equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

"No Second Troy" expresses Yeats' most direct vision of Maud Gonne, the headstrong Irish nationalist he loved unrequitedly throughout his life. The poem deals with Yeats’ disenchantment with the modern age: blind to true beauty, unheroic, and unworthy of Maud Gonne's ancient nobility and heroism. The "ignorant men," without "courage equal to desire," personify Yeats’ assignment of blame for his failed attempts at obtaining Maud Gonne's love. The poet's vision of his beloved as Helen of Troy externalizes his blame by exposing the modern age's lack of courage and inability to temper Maud Gonne's headstrong heroism and timeless beauty.

Yeats wrote this poem in December of 1908, comparatively early in his lifelong relationship with Maud Gonne. In a letter to his father dated December 29, 1908, Yeats writes from Paris and mentions lunching with Maud Gonne that afternoon . This is after a three year period in which Maud Gonne distanced herself socially after the failure of her first marriage in 1905.

Some useful sites - 

http://www.enricoeuron.com/ Enrico Euron Official site (Celtic Harp)

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