Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition

Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen (Author: William Butler Yeats)

p.206

1. Many ingenious lovely things are gone
   That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,

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   p.207

   Protected from the circle of the moon
   That pitches common things about. There stood
   Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
   An ancient image made of olive wood —
   And gone are Phidias' famous ivories
   And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.
• We too had many pretty toys when young;
  A law indifferent to blame or praise,
  To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong
  Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;
  Public opinion ripening for so long
  We thought it would outlive all future days.
  O what fine thought we had because we thought
  That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
• All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
  And a great army but a showy thing;
  What matter that no cannon had been turned
  Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king
  Thought that unless a little powder burned
  The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting
  And yet it lack all glory; and perchance
  The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.
• Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
  Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
  Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
  To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;
  The night can sweat with terror as before
  We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
  And planned to bring the world under a rule,
  Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
• He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned
  Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant
  From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand,
  Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent

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  p.208

  On master-work of intellect or hand,
  No honour leave its mighty monument,
  Has but one comfort left: all triumph would
  But break upon his ghostly solitude.
• But is there any comfort to be found?
  Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
  What more is there to say? That country round
  None dared admit, if such a thought were his,
  Incendiary or bigot could be found
  To burn that stump on the Acropolis,
  Or break in bits the famous ivories
  Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.

1. When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound
   A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth,
   It seemed that a dragon of air
   Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round
   Or hurried them off on its own furious path;
   So the Platonic Year
   Whirls out new right and wrong,
   Whirls in the old instead;
   All men are dancers and their tread
   Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.

1. Some moralist or mythological poet
   Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
   I am satisfied with that,
   Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
   Before that brief gleam of its life be gone,
   An image of its state;
   The wings half spread for flight,
   The breast thrust out in pride
   Whether to play, or to ride
   Those winds that clamour of approaching night.

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p.209

• A man in his own secret meditation
  Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made
  In art or politics;
  Some platonist affirms that in the station
  Where we should cast off body and trade
  The ancient habit sticks,
  And that if our works could
  But vanish with our breath
  That were a lucky death,
  For triumph can but mar our solitude.
• The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:
  That image can bring wildness, bring a rage
  To end all things, to end
  What my laborious life imagined, even
  The half-imagined, the half-written page;
  O but we dreamed to mend
  Whatever mischief seemed
  To afflict mankind, but now
  That winds of winter blow
  Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

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

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

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  p.210

  They fixed old aching eyes,
  They never saw how seasons run,
  And now but gape at the sun.
• Come let us mock at the good
  That fancied goodness might be gay,
  And sick of solitude
  Might proclaim a holiday:
  Wind shrieked — and where are they?
• Mock mockers after that
  That would not lift a hand maybe
  To help good, wise or great
  To bar that foul storm out, for we
  Traffic in mockery.

1. Violence upon the roads: violence of horses;
   Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded
   On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane,
   But wearied running round and round in their courses
   All break and vanish, and evil gathers head:
   Herodias' daughters have returned again,
   A sudden blast of dusty wind and after
   Thunder of feet, tumult of images,
   Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind;
   And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter
   All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries,
   According to the wind, for all are blind.
   But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon
   There lurches past, his great eyes without thought
   Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks,
   That insolent fiend Robert Artisson
   To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
   Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.