GOATHERD

You sing as always of the natural life, And I that made like music in my youth Hearing it now have sighed for that young man And certain lost companions of my own.

SHEPHERD

They say that on your barren mountain ridge You have measured out the road that the soul treads When it has vanished from our natural eyes; That you have talked with apparitions.

GOATHERD

Indeed My daily thoughts since the first stupor of youth Have found the path my goats' feet cannot find.

SHEPHERD

Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have plucked Some medicable herb to make our grief Less bitter.

GOATHERD

They have brought me from that ridge Seed pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy.

[_Sings._

'He grows younger every second That were all his birthdays reckoned Much too solemn seemed; Because of what he had dreamed, Or the ambitions that he served, Much too solemn and reserved.

Jaunting, journeying To his own dayspring, He unpacks the loaded pern Of all 'twas pain or joy to learn, Of all that he had made.

The outrageous war shall fade; At some old winding whitethorn root He'll practice on the shepherd's flute, Or on the close-cropped gra.s.s Court his shepherd la.s.s, Or run where lads reform our day-time Till that is their long shouting play-time; Knowledge he shall unwind Through victories of the mind, Till, clambering at the cradle side, He dreams himself his mother's pride, All knowledge lost in trance Of sweeter ignorance.'

SHEPHERD

When I have shut these ewes and this old ram Into the fold, we'll to the woods and there Cut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn bark But put no name and leave them at her door.

To know the mountain and the valley grieve May be a quiet thought to wife and mother, And children when they spring up shoulder high.

LINES WRITTEN IN DEJECTION

When have I last looked on The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies Of the dark leopards of the moon?

All the wild witches those most n.o.ble ladies, For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.

The holy centaurs of the hills are banished; And I have nothing but harsh sun; Heroic mother moon has vanished, And now that I have come to fifty years I must endure the timid sun.

THE DAWN

I would be ignorant as the dawn That has looked down On that old queen measuring a town With the pin of a brooch, Or on the withered men that saw From their pedantic Babylon The careless planets in their courses, The stars fade out where the moon comes, And took their tablets and did sums; I would be ignorant as the dawn That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses; I would be--for no knowledge is worth a straw-- Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

ON WOMAN

May G.o.d be praised for woman That gives up all her mind, A man may find in no man A friendship of her kind That covers all he has brought As with her flesh and bone, Nor quarrels with a thought Because it is not her own.

Though pedantry denies It's plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens.

Yet never could, although They say he counted gra.s.s, Count all the praises due When Sheba was his la.s.s, When she the iron wrought, or When from the smithy fire It shuddered in the water: Harshness of their desire That made them stretch and yawn, Pleasure that comes with sleep, Shudder that made them one.

What else He give or keep G.o.d grant me--no, not here, For I am not so bold To hope a thing so dear Now I am growing old, But when if the tale's true The Pestle of the moon That pounds up all anew Brings me to birth again-- To find what once I had And know what once I have known, Until I am driven mad, Sleep driven from my bed, By tenderness and care, Pity, an aching head, Gnashing of teeth, despair; And all because of some one Perverse creature of chance, And live like Solomon That Sheba led a dance.

THE FISHERMAN

Although I can see him still, The freckled man who goes To a grey place on a hill In grey Connemara clothes At dawn to cast his flies, It's long since I began To call up to the eyes This wise and simple man.

All day I'd looked in the face What I had hoped 'twould be To write for my own race And the reality; The living men that I hate, The dead man that I loved, The craven man in his seat, The insolent unreproved, And no knave brought to book Who has won a drunken cheer, The witty man and his joke Aimed at the commonest ear, The clever man who cries The catch-cries of the clown, The beating down of the wise And great Art beaten down.

Maybe a twelvemonth since Suddenly I began, In scorn of this audience, Imagining a man And his sun-freckled face, And grey Connemara cloth, Climbing up to a place Where stone is dark under froth, And the down turn of his wrist When the flies drop in the stream: A man who does not exist, A man who is but a dream; And cried, 'Before I am old I shall have written him one Poem maybe as cold And pa.s.sionate as the dawn.'

THE HAWK

'Call down the hawk from the air; Let him be hooded or caged Till the yellow eye has grown mild, For larder and spit are bare, The old cook enraged, The scullion gone wild.'

'I will not be clapped in a hood, Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist, Now I have learnt to be proud Hovering over the wood In the broken mist Or tumbling cloud.'

'What tumbling cloud did you cleave, Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind, Last evening? that I, who had sat Dumbfounded before a knave, Should give to my friend A pretence of wit.'

MEMORY

One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain Because the mountain gra.s.s Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain.

HER PRAISE

She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.