The Complete Works - William Butler Yeats

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His hour to shoot, still hangs

      A cloudy quiver over Parc-na-Lee.

      August, 1902.

       Table of Contents

      I thought of your beauty, and this arrow,

      Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow.

      There’s no man may look upon her, no man;

      As when newly grown to be a woman,

      Blossom pale, she pulled down the pale blossom

      At the moth hour and hid it in her bosom.

      This beauty’s kinder, yet for a reason

      I could weep that the old is out of season.

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      One that is ever kind said yesterday:

      ‘Your well-beloved’s hair has threads of grey,

      And little shadows come about her eyes;

      Time can but make it easier to be wise,

      Though now it’s hard, till trouble is at an end;

      And so be patient, be wise and patient, friend.’

      But, heart, there is no 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.

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      I thought to fly to her when the end of day

      Awakens an old memory, and say,

      ‘Your strength, that is so lofty and fierce and kind,

      It might call up a new age, calling to mind

      The queens that were imagined long ago,

      Is but half yours: he kneaded in the dough

      Through the long years of youth, and who would have thought

      It all, and more than it all, would come to naught,

      And that dear words meant nothing?’ But enough,

      For when we have blamed the wind we can blame love;

      Or, if there needs be more, be nothing said

      That would be harsh for children that have strayed.

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      Never give all the heart, for love

      Will hardly seem worth thinking of

      To passionate women if it seem

      Certain, and they never dream

      That it fades out from kiss to kiss;

      For everything that’s lovely is

      But a brief dreamy kind delight.

      O never give the heart outright,

      For they, for all smooth lips can say,

      Have given their hearts up to the play.

      And who could play it well enough

      If deaf and dumb and blind with love?

      He that made this knows all the cost,

      For he gave all his heart and lost.

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      I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds,

      ‘Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,

      I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words,

      For the roads are unending, and there is no place to my mind.’

      The honey-pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill,

      And I fell asleep upon lonely Echtge of streams.

      No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;

      The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

      I know of the leafy paths that the witches take,

      Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool,

      And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake;

      I know where a dim moon drifts, where the Danaan kind

      Wind and unwind their dances when the light grows cool

      On the island lawns, their feet where the pale foam gleams.

      No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;

      The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

      I know of the sleepy country, where swans fly round

      Coupled with golden chains, and sing as they fly.

      A king and a queen are wandering there, and the sound

      Has made them so happy and hopeless, so deaf and so blind

      With wisdom, they wander till all the years have gone by;

      I know, and the curlew and peewit on Echtge of streams.

      No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;

      The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

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      We sat together at one summer’s end,

      That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,

      And you and I, and talked of poetry.

      I said: ‘A line will take us hours maybe;

      Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,

      Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

      Better go down upon your marrow bones

      And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

      Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;

      For to articulate sweet sounds together

      Is to work harder than all these, and yet

      Be

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