Michael Robartes and the Dancer<html:br/> [an xml-hypertext version] William Butler Yeats Volume 8 of XML-TEI Yeats' Poems
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 1999 <p>Michael Robartes and the Dancer</p> William Butler Yeats The Cuala Press Churchtown, Dundrum 1920 17 October 1999 xml, xmlns added for images and links: GLD Images from Nathan D. Rose, www.villasubrosa.com/Nathan/visyeats.html 17 March 1998 links: GLD Added various WWW sites for browsing in html. 8 December 1997 Additions:George Dillon added DIV1 tags for poem titles (missing in most) for navigation; normalized 1995 UM HTI: unknown edited to conform to TEI dtd MICHAEL ROBARTES AND THE DANCER 1920 MICHAEL ROBARTES AND THE DANCER He.Opinion is not worth a rush; In his altar-piece the knight, Who grips his long spear so to push That dragon through the fading light, Loved the lady; and it's plain The half-dead dragon was her thought, That every morning rose again And dug its claws and shrieked and fought. Could the impossible come to pass She would have time to turn her eyes, Her lover thought, upon the glass And on the instant would grow wise. She. You mean they argued. He. Put it so; But bear in mind your lover's wage Is what your looking-glass can show, And that he will turn green with rage At all that is not pictured there. She. May I not put myself to college? He. Go pluck Athene by the hair; For what mere book can grant a knowledge With an impassioned gravity Appropriate to that beating breast, That vigorous thigh, that dreaming eye? And may the Devil take the rest. She. And must no beautiful woman be Learned like a man? He. Paul Veronese And all his sacred company Imagined bodies all their days By the lagoon you love so much, For proud, soft, ceremonious proof That all must come to sight and touch; While Michael Angelo's Sistine roof, His ‘Morning’ and his ‘Night’ disclose How sinew that has been pulled tight, Or it may be loosened in repose, Can rule by supernatural right Yet be but sinew. She. I have heard said There is great danger in the body. He.Did God in portioning wine and bread Give man His thought or His mere body? She. My wretched dragon is perplexed. He. I have principles to prove me right. It follows from this Latin text That blest souls are not composite, And that all beautiful women may Live in uncomposite blessedness, And lead us to the like—if they Will banish every thought, unless The lineaments that please their view When the long looking-glass is full, Even from the foot-sole think it too. She. They say such different things at school. SOLOMON AND THE WITCH AND thus declared that Arab lady: ‘Last night, where under the wild moon On grassy mattress I had laid me, Within my arms great Solomon, I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue Not his, not mine.’ Who understood Whatever has been said, sighed, sung, Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed, Thereon replied: ‘A cockerel Crew from a blossoming apple bough Three hundred years before the Fall, And never crew again till now, And would not now but that he thought, Chance being at one with Choice at last, All that the brigand apple brought And this foul world were dead at last. He that crowed out eternity Thought to have crowed it in again. For though love has a spider's eye To find out some appropriate pain Aye, though all passion's in the glance For every nerve, and tests a lover With cruelties of Choice and Chance; And when at last that murder's over Maybe the bride-bed brings despair, For each an imagined image brings And finds a real image there; Yet the world ends when these two things, Though several, are a single light, When oil and wick are burned in one; Therefore a blessed moon last night Gave Sheba to her Solomon.’ ‘Yet the world stays.’ ‘If that be so, Your cockerel found us in the wrong Although he thought it. worth a crow. Maybe an image is too strong Or maybe is not strong enough.’ ‘The night has fallen; not a sound In the forbidden sacred grove Unless a petal hit the ground, Nor any human sight within it But the crushed grass where we have lain! And the moon is wilder every minute. O! Solomon! let us try again.’ AN IMAGE FROM A PAST LIFE He. Never until this night have I been stirred. The elaborate starlight 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. UNDER SATURN DO not because this day I have grown saturnine Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought Because I have no other youth, can make me pine; For how should I forget the wisdom that you brought, The comfort that you made? Although my wits have gone On a fantastic ride, my horse's flanks are spurred By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen, And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard, And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died Before my time, seem like a vivid memory. You heard that labouring man who had served my people. He said Upon the open road, near to the Sligo quay No, no, not said, but cried it out ‘You have come again, And surely after twenty years it was time to come.’ I am thinking of a child's vow sworn in vain Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home. November 1919 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 winged 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 Changes 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 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. September 25, 1916 SIXTEEN DEAD MEN O BUT we talked at large before The sixteen men were shot, But who can talk of give and take, What should be and what not While those dead men are loitering there To stir the boiling pot? You say that we should still the land Till Germany's overcome; But who is there to argue that Now Pearse is deaf and dumb? And is their logic to outweigh MacDonagh's bony thumb? How could you dream they'd listen That have an ear alone For those new comrades they have found, Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone Or meddle with our give and take That converse bone to bone? THE ROSE TREE ‘O WORDS are lightly spoken,’ Said Pearse to Connolly, ‘Maybe a breath of politic words Has withered our Rose Tree; Or maybe but a wind that blows Across the bitter sea.’ ‘It needs to be but watered,’ James Connolly replied, ‘To make the green come out again And spread on every side, And shake the blossom from the bud To be the garden's pride.’ ‘But where can we draw water,’ Said Pearse to Connolly, ‘When all the wells are parched away? O plain as plain can be There's nothing but our own red blood Can make a right Rose Tree.’ ON A POLITICAL PRISONER SHE that but little patience knew, From childhood on, had now so much A grey gull lost its fear and flew Down to her cell and there alit, And there endured her fingers' touch And from her fingers ate its bit. Did she in touching that lone wing Recall the years before her mind Became a bitter, an abstract thing, Her thought some popular enmity: Blind and leader of the blind Drinking the foul ditch where they lie? When long ago I saw her ride Under Ben Bulben to the meet, The beauty of her country-side With all youth's lonely wildness stirred, She seemed to have grown clean and sweet Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird: Sea-borne, or balanced on the air When first it sprang out of the nest Upon some lofty rock to stare Upon the cloudy canopy, While under its storm-beaten breast Cried out the hollows of the sea. THE LEADERS OF THE CROWD THEY must to keep their certainty accuse All that are different of a base intent; Pull down established honour; hawk for news Whatever their loose fantasy invent And murmur it with bated breath, as though The abounding gutter had been Helicon Or calumny a song. How can they know Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb. TOWARDS BREAK OF DAY WAS it the double of my dream The woman that by me lay Dreamed, or did we halve a dream Under the first cold gleam of day? I thought: ‘There is a waterfall Upon Ben Bulben side That all my childhood counted dear; Were I to travel far and wide I could not find a thing so dear.’ My memories had magnified So many times childish delight. I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild. Even accusing Heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch. I dreamed towards break of day, The cold blown spray in my nostril. But she that beside me lay Had watched in bitterer sleep The marvellous stag of Arthur, That lofty white stag, leap From mountain steep to steep. DEMON AND BEAST FOR certain minutes at the least That crafty demon and that loud beast That plague me day and night Ran out of my sight; Though I had long perned in the gyre, Between my hatred and desire. I saw my freedom won And all laugh in the sun. The glittering eyes in a death's head Of old Luke Wadding's portrait said Welcome, and the Ormondes all Nodded upon the wall, And even Strafford smiled as though It made him happier to know I understood his plan. Now that the loud beast ran There was no portrait in the Gallery But beckoned to sweet company, For all men's thoughts grew clear Being dear as mine are dear. But soon a tear-drop started up, For aimless joy had made me stop Beside the little lake To watch a white gull take A bit of bread thrown up into the air; Now gyring down and perning there He splashed where an absurd Portly green-pated bird Shook off the water from his back; Being no more demoniac A stupid happy creature Could rouse my whole nature. Yet I am certain as can be That every natural victory Belongs to beast or demon, That never yet had freeman Right mastery of natural things, And that mere growing old, that brings Chilled blood, this sweetness brought; Yet have no dearer thought Than that I may find out a way To make it linger half a day. O what a sweetness strayed Through barren Thebaid, Or by the Mareotic sea When that exultant Anthony And twice a thousand more Starved upon the shore And withered to a bag of bones! What had the Caesars but their thrones? 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? A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER ONCE more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle But Gregory's wood and one bare hill Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind, Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed; And for an hour I have walked and prayed Because of the great gloom that is in my mind. I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower, And under the arches of the bridge, and scream In the elms above the flooded stream; Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea. May she be granted beauty and yet not Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught, Or hers before a looking-glass, for such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend. Helen being chosen found life flat and dull And later had much trouble from a fool, While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray, Being fatherless could have her way Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man. It's certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone. In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned; Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned By those that are not entirely beautiful; Yet many, that have played the fool For beauty's very self, has charm made wise. And many a poor man that has roved, Loved and thought himself beloved, From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes. May she become a flourishing hidden tree That all her thoughts may like the linnet be, And have no business but dispensing round Their magnanimities of sound, Nor but in merriment begin a chase, Nor but in merriment a quarrel. O may she live like some green laurel Rooted in one dear perpetual place. My mind, because the minds that I have loved, The sort of beauty that I have approved, Prosper but little, has dried up of late, Yet knows that to be choked with hate May well be of all evil chances chief. If there's no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf. An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of plenty's horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind? Considering that, all hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will; She can, though every face should scowl And every windy quarter howl Or every bellows burst, be happy still. And may her bridegroom bring her to a house Where all's accustomed, ceremonious; For arrogance and hatred are the wares Peddled in the thoroughfares. How but in custom and in ceremony Are innocence and beauty born? Ceremony's a name for the rich horn, And custom for the spreading laurel tree. June 1919 A MEDITATION IN TIME OF WAR FOR one throb of the artery, While on that old grey stone I sat Under the old wind-broken tree, I knew that One is animate, Mankind inanimate phantasy. TO BE CARVED ON A STONE AT THOOR BALLYLEE I, THE poet William Yeats, With old mill boards and sea-green slates, And smithy work from the Gort forge, Restored this tower for my wife George; And may these characters remain When all is ruin once again.