The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

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СКАЧАТЬ my dreams;

      I have spread my dreams under your feet;

      Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

HE THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS WHEN A PART OF THE CONSTELLATIONS OF HEAVEN

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      I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young

      And weep because I know all things now:

      I have been a hazel tree and they hung

      The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough

      Among my leaves in times out of mind:

      I became a rush that horses tread:

      I became a man, a hater of the wind,

      Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head

      Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair

      Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;

      Although the rushes and the fowl of the air

      Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.

THE OLD AGE OF QUEEN MAEVE

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      Maeve the great queen was pacing to and fro,

      Between the walls covered with beaten bronze,

      In her high house at Cruachan; the long hearth,

      Flickering with ash and hazel, but half showed

      Where the tired horse-boys lay upon the rushes,

      Or on the benches underneath the walls,

      In comfortable sleep; all living slept

      But that great queen, who more than half the night

      Had paced from door to fire and fire to door.

      Though now in her old age, in her young age

      She had been beautiful in that old way

      That’s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone,

      And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all

      But soft beauty and indolent desire.

      She could have called over the rim of the world

      Whatever woman’s lover had hit her fancy,

      And yet had been great bodied and great limbed,

      Fashioned to be the mother of strong children;

      And she’d had lucky eyes and a high heart,

      And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,

      At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,

      Sudden and laughing.

      O unquiet heart,

      Why do you praise another, praising her,

      As if there were no tale but your own tale

      Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound?

      Have I not bid you tell of that great queen

      Who has been buried some two thousand years?

      When night was at its deepest, a wild goose

      Cried from the porter’s lodge, and with long clamour

      Shook the ale horns and shields upon their hooks;

      But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power

      Had filled the house with Druid heaviness;

      And wondering who of the many-changing Sidhe

      Had come as in the old times to counsel her,

      Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall, being old,

      To that small chamber by the outer gate.

      The porter slept, although he sat upright

      With still and stony limbs and open eyes.

      Maeve waited, and when that ear-piercing noise

      Broke from his parted lips and broke again,

      She laid a hand on either of his shoulders,

      And shook him wide awake, and bid him say

      Who of the wandering many-changing ones

      Had troubled his sleep. But all he had to say

      Was that, the air being heavy and the dogs

      More still than they had been for a good month,

      He had fallen asleep, and, though he had dreamed nothing,

      He could remember when he had had fine dreams.

      It was before the time of the great war

      Over the White-Horned Bull, and the Brown Bull.

      She turned away; he turned again to sleep

      That no god troubled now, and, wondering

      What matters were afoot among the Sidhe,

      Maeve walked through that great hall, and with a sigh

      Lifted the curtain of her sleeping-room,

      Remembering that she too had seemed divine

      To many thousand eyes, and to her own

      One that the generations had long waited

      That work too difficult for mortal hands

      Might be accomplished. Bunching the curtain up

      She saw her husband Ailell sleeping there,

      And thought of days when he’d had a straight body,

      And of that famous Fergus, Nessa’s husband,

      Who had been the lover of her middle life.

      Suddenly Ailell spoke out of his sleep,

      And СКАЧАТЬ