Here at right of the entrance this bronze head,
Human, superhuman, a bird's round eye,
Everything else withered and mummy-dead.
What great tomb-haunter sweeps the distant sky
(Something may linger there though all else die;)
And finds there nothing to make its tetror less
i{Hysterica passio} of its own emptiness?

No dark tomb-haunter once; her form all full
As though with magnanimity of light,
Yet a most gentle woman; who can tell
Which of her forms has shown her substance right?
Or maybe substance can be composite,
profound McTaggart thought so, and in a breath
A mouthful held the extreme of life and death.

But even at the starting-post, all sleek and new,
I saw the wildness in her and I thought
A vision of terror that it must live through
Had shattered her soul. Propinquity had brought
Imagiation to that pitch where it casts out
All that is not itself: I had grown wild
And wandered murmuring everywhere, "My child, my
child! '

Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall;
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave,
And wondered what was left for massacre to save.

A Bronze Head

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.

A Coat

That crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, "O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

A Crazed Girl

Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.

A Deep-sworn Vow

I&nbsp;

My Soul.&nbsp;I summon to the winding ancient stair;&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Upon the breathless starlit air,&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fix every wandering thought upon&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That quarter where all thought is done:&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who can distinguish darkness from the soul?&nbsp;

My Self.&nbsp;The consecrated blade upon my knees&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was,&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Unspotted by the centuries;&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From some court-lady's dress and round&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The wooden scabbard bound and wound,&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn.&nbsp;

My Soul.&nbsp;Why should the imagination of a man&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Long past his prime remember things that are&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Emblematical of love and war?&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Think of ancestral night that can,&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If but imagination scorn the earth&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And intellect its wandering&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To this and that and t'other thing,&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Deliver from the crime of death and birth.&nbsp;

My Self.&nbsp;Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Five hundred years ago, about it lie&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Flowers from I know not what embroidery&mdash;&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Heart's purple&mdash;and all these I set&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For emblems of the day against the tower&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Emblematical of the night,&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And claim as by a soldier's right&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A charter to commit the crime once more.&nbsp;

My Soul.&nbsp;Such fullness in that quarter overflows&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And falls into the basin of the mind&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For intellect no longer knows&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is&nbsp;from the&nbsp;Ought, or&nbsp;Knower&nbsp;from the&nbsp;Known&mdash;&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That is to say, ascends to Heaven;&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Only the dead can be forgiven;&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.&nbsp;


II&nbsp;

My Self.&nbsp;A living man is blind and drinks his drop.&nbsp;
What matter if the ditches are impure?&nbsp;
What matter if I live it all once more?&nbsp;
Endure that toil of growing up;&nbsp;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress&nbsp;
Of boyhood changing into man;&nbsp;
The unfinished man and his pain&nbsp;
Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;&nbsp;

The finished man among his enemies?&mdash;&nbsp;
How in the name of Heaven can he escape&nbsp;
That defiling and disfigured shape&nbsp;
The mirror of malicious eyes&nbsp;
Casts upon his eyes until at last&nbsp;
He thinks that shape must be his shape?&nbsp;
And what's the good of an escape&nbsp;
If honour find him in the wintry blast?&nbsp;

I am content to live it all again&nbsp;
And yet again, if it be life to pitch&nbsp;
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,&nbsp;
A blind man battering blind men;&nbsp;
Or into that most fecund ditch of all,&nbsp;
The folly that man does&nbsp;
Or must suffer, if he woos&nbsp;
A proud woman not kindred of his soul.&nbsp;

I am content to follow to its source&nbsp;
Every event in action or in thought;&nbsp;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!&nbsp;
When such as I cast out remorse&nbsp;
So great a sweetness flows into the breast&nbsp;
We must laugh and we must sing,&nbsp;
We are blest by everything,&nbsp;
Everything we look upon is blest.


A Dialogue Of Self And Soul

I Dreamed that one had died in a strange place
Near no accustomed hand,
And they had nailed the boards above her face,
The peasants of that land,
Wondering to lay her in that solitude,
And raised above her mound
A cross they had made out of two bits of wood,
And planted cypress round;
And left her to the indifferent stars above
Until I carved these words:
I(She was more beautiful than thy first love,)
I(But now lies under boards.)

A Dream Of Death

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

A Drinking Song

Come swish around, my pretty punk,
And keep me dancing still
That I may stay a sober man
Although I drink my fill.

Sobriety is a jewel
That I do much adore;
And therefore keep me dancing
Though drunkards lie and snore.
O mind your feet, O mind your feet,
Keep dancing like a wave,
And under every dancer
A dead man in his grave.
No ups and downs, my pretty,
A mermaid, not a punk;
A drunkard is a dead man,
And all dead men are drunk.

A Drunken Man's Praise Of Sobriety

We who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:

Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above:

Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:

Us who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told.

A Faery Song

I admit the briar
Entangled in my hair
Did not injure me;
My blenching and trembling,
Nothing but dissembling,
Nothing but coquetry.

I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a man’s attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones.

Brightness that I pull back
From the Zodiac,
Why those questioning eyes
That are fixed upon me?
What can they do but shun me
If empty night replies?

William Butler Yeats

A Bronze Head

A Coat

A Crazed Girl

A Deep-sworn Vow

A Dialogue Of Self And Soul

A Dream Of Death

A Drinking Song

A Drunken Man's Praise Of Sobriety

A Faery Song

A First Confession

William Butler Yeats

Apocalypse, Now

A Bronze Head

A Coat

A Crazed Girl

A Deep-sworn Vow

A Dialogue Of Self And Soul

A Dream Of Death

A Drinking Song

A Drunken Man's Praise Of Sobriety

A Faery Song

A First Confession