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An Image from a Past Life
He. Never until this night have I been stirred.
The elaborate star-light throws a reflection
On the dark stream,
Till all the eddies gleam;
And thereupon there comes that scream
From terrified, invisible beast or bird:
Image of poignant recollection.
She. An image of my heart that is smitten through
Out of all likelihood, or reason,
And when at last,
Youth’s bitterness being past,
I had thought that all my days were cast
Amid most lovely places; smitten as though
It had not learned its lesson.
He. Why have you laid your hands upon my eyes?
What can have suddenly alarmed you
Whereon ’twere best
My eyes should never rest?
What is there but the slowly fading west,
The river imaging the flashing skies,
All that to this moment charmed you?
She. A sweetheart from another life floats there
As though she had been forced to linger
From vague distress
Or arrogant loveliness,
Merely to loosen out a tress
Among the starry eddies of her hair
Upon the paleness of a finger.
He. But why should you grow suddenly afraid
And start — I at your shoulder —
Imagining
That any night could bring
An image up, or anything
Even to eyes that beauty had driven mad,
But images to make me fonder?
She. Now she has thrown her arms above her head;
Whether she threw them up to flout me,
Or but to find,
Now that no fingers bind,
That her hair streams upon the wind,
I do not know, that know I am afraid
Of the hovering thing night brought me.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
An Image from a Past Life
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
A Poet to his Beloved
I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams,
White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
White woman with numberless dreams,
I bring you my passionate rhyme.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
A Poet to his Beloved
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
When Helen lived
We have cried in our despair
That men desert,
For some trivial affair
Or noisy, insolent sport,
Beauty that we have won
From bitterest hours;
Yet we, had we walked within
Those topless towers
Where Helen walked with her boy,
Had given but as the rest
Of the men and women of Troy,
A word and a jest.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
When Helen lived
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
The Arrow
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,
Tall and noble but with face and bosom
Delicate in colour as apple blossom.
This beauty’s kinder, yet for a reason
I could weep that the old is out of season.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
The Arrow
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
All Things can tempt Me
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;
Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
Than this accustomed toil. When I was young,
I had not given a penny for a song
Did not the poet sing it with such airs
That one believed he had a sword upstairs;
Yet would be now, could I but have my wish,
Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
All Things can tempt Me
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
The Realists
Hope that you may understand!
What can books of men that wive
In a dragon-guarded land,
Paintings of the dolphin-drawn
Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons
Do, but awake a hope to live
That had gone
With the dragons?
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
The Realists
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
The Mask
‘Put off that mask of burning gold
With emerald eyes.’
‘O no, my dear, you make so bold
To find if hearts be wild and wise,
And yet not cold.’
‘I would but find what’s there to find,
Love or deceit.’
‘It was the mask engaged your mind,
And after set your heart to beat,
Not what’s behind.’
‘But lest you are my enemy,
I must enquire.’
‘O no, my dear, let all that be;
What matter, so there is but fire
In you, in me?’
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
The Mask
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
He tells of the Perfect Beauty
O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman’s gaze
And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:
And therefore my heart will bow, when dew
Is dropping sleep, until God burn time,
Before the unlabouring stars and you.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
He tells of the Perfect Beauty
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
A Coat
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
A Coat
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
Maid Quiet
Where has Maid Quiet gone to,
Nodding her russet hood?
The winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood.
O how could I be so calm
When she rose up to depart?
Now words that called up the lightning
Are hurtling through my heart.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
Maid Quiet
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
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 on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
The Folly Of Being Comforted
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 seems impossible, and so
Patience is all that you have need of.’ 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.
William Butler Yeats poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Y-Z, Yeats, William Butler
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