‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ by W.H. Auden

.


crossposted at The Chinese Jar

Angela McGlowan National Tea Party Convention

&&&

To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing

NOW all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one 5
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away 10
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known 15
That is most difficult.


W.B. Yeats

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
All that you need is patience.'

Heart cries, '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.'

Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.

W. B. Yeats
1904

THE HOST OF THE AIR

*******************************************
*******************************************
O'DRISCOLL drove with a song
The wild duck and the drake
From the tall and the tufted reeds
Of the drear Hart Lake.
 
And he saw how the reeds grew dark
At the coming of night-tide,
And dreamed of the long dim hair
Of Bridget his bride.
 
He heard while he sang and dreamed
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.
 
And he saw young men and young girls
Who danced on a level place,
And Bridget his bride among them,
With a sad and a gay face.
 
The dancers crowded about him
And many a sweet thing said,
And a young man brought him red wine
And a young girl white bread.
 
But Bridget drew him by the sleeve
Away from the merry bands,
To old men playing at cards
With a twinkling of ancient hands.
 
The bread and the wine had a doom,
For these were the host of the air;
He sat and played in a dream
Of her long dim hair.
 
He played with the merry old men
And thought not of evil chance,
Until one bore Bridget his bride
Away from the merry dance.
 
He bore her away in his arms,
The handsomest young man there,
And his neck and his breast and his arms
Were drowned in her long dim hair.
 
O'Driscoll scattered the cards
And out of his dream awoke:
Old men and young men and young girls
Were gone like a drifting smoke;
 
But he heard high up in the air
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.

William Butler Yeats

"Sailing to Byzantium" by W.B. Yeats

In Memory of W. B. Yeats

I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

II

     You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
    The parish of rich women, physical decay,
    Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
    Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
    For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
    In the valley of its making where executives
    Would never want to tamper, flows on south
    From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
    Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
    A way of happening, a mouth.

III

          Earth, receive an honoured guest:
         William Yeats is laid to rest.
         Let the Irish vessel lie
         Emptied of its poetry.

         In the nightmare of the dark
         All the dogs of Europe bark,
         And the living nations wait,
         Each sequestered in its hate;

         Intellectual disgrace
         Stares from every human face,
         And the seas of pity lie
         Locked and frozen in each eye.

         Follow, poet, follow right
         To the bottom of the night,
         With your unconstraining voice
         Still persuade us to rejoice;

         With the farming of a verse
         Make a vineyard of the curse,
         Sing of human unsuccess
         In a rapture of distress;

         In the deserts of the heart
         Let the healing fountain start,
         In the prison of his days
         Teach the free man how to praise.

W. H. Auden