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.

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.

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;

And of apple islands 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.

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 thought an idler by 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.

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.

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.’

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 Niam, 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.

Three Voices together

Hurry to bless the hands that play,

The mouths that speak, the notes and strings,

O masters of the glittering town!

O! lay the shrilly trumpet down,

Though drunken with the flags that sway

Over the ramparts and the towers,

And with the waving of your wings.

First Voice

Maybe they linger by the way;

One gathers up his purple gown;

One leans and mutters by the wall;

He dreads the weight of mortal hours.

Second Voice

O no, O no, they hurry down

Like plovers that have heard the call.

Third Voice

O, kinsmen of the Three in One,

O, kinsmen bless the hands that play.

The notes they waken shall live on

When all this heavy history’s done.

Our hands, our hands must ebb away.

Three Voices together

The proud and careless notes live on

But bless our hands that ebb away.

There’s many a strong farmer

Whose heart would break in two

If he could see the townland

That we are riding to;

Boughs have their fruit and blossom,

At all times of the year,

Rivers are running over

With red beer and brown beer.

An old man plays the bagpipes

In a golden and silver wood,

Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,

Are dancing in a crowd.

The little fox he murmured,

‘O what is the world’s bane?’

The sun was laughing sweetly,

The moon plucked at my rein;

But the little