The Complete Works - William Butler Yeats

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the noisy set

      Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

      The martyrs call the world.’

      That woman then

      Murmured with her young voice, for whose mild sake

      There’s many a one shall find out all heartache

      In finding that it’s young and mild and low:

      ‘There is one thing that all we women know,

      Although we never heard of it at school—

      That we must labour to be beautiful.’

      I said: ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing

      Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.

      There have been lovers who thought love should be

      So much compounded of high courtesy

      That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

      Precedents out of beautiful old books;

      Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

      We sat grown quiet at the name of love;

      We saw the last embers of daylight die,

      And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

      A moon, worn as if it had been a shell

      Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell

      About the stars and broke in days and years.

      I had a thought for no one’s but your ears;

      That you were beautiful, and that I strove

      To love you in the old high way of love;

      That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown

      As weary hearted as that hollow moon.

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      The old brown thorn trees break in two high over Cummen Strand,

      Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand;

      Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies,

      But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes

      Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.

      The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knocknarea,

      And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say.

      Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat;

      But we have all bent low and low and kissed the quiet feet

      Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.

      The yellow pool has overflowed high up on Clooth-na-Bare,

      For the wet winds are blowing out of the clinging air;

      Like heavy flooded waters our bodies and our blood;

      But purer than a tall candle before the Holy Rood

      Is Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.

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      I heard the old, old men say,

      ‘Everything alters,

      And one by one we drop away.’

      They had hands like claws, and their knees

      Were twisted like the old thorn trees

      By the waters.

      I heard the old, old men say,

      ‘All that’s beautiful drifts away

      Like the waters.’

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      I have no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde,

      Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle,

      Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while;

      Nor Ulad, when Naoise had thrown a sail upon the wind,

      Nor lands that seem too dim to be burdens on the heart;

      Land-under-Wave, where out of the moon’s light and the sun’s

      Seven old sisters wind the threads of the long-lived ones;

      Land-of-the-Tower, where Aengus has thrown the gates apart,

      And Wood-of-Wonders, where one kills an ox at dawn,

      To find it when night falls laid on a golden bier:

      Therein are many queens like Branwen and Guinivere;

      And Niamh and Laban and Fand, who could change to an otter or fawn,

      And the wood-woman, whose lover was changed to a blue-eyed hawk;

      And whether I go in my dreams by woodland, or dun, or shore,

      Or on the unpeopled waves with kings to pull at the oar,

      I hear the harp-string praise them, or hear their mournful talk.

      Because of a story I heard under the thin horn

      Of the third moon, that hung between the night and the day,

      To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay,

      Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.

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      O hurry to the water amid the trees,

      For there the tall deer and his leman sigh

      When they have but looked upon their images,

      O that none ever loved but you and I!

      Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed,

      Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,

      When the sun looked out of his golden hood,

      O that none ever loved but you and I!

      O hurry to the hollow wood, for there

      I will drive out the deer and moon and cry—

      O my share of the world, O yellow hair,

      No one has ever loved but you and I!

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      Sweetheart, do not love too long:

      I loved long and long,

      And grew to be out of fashion

      Like an old song.

      All through the years of our youth

      Neither

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