The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

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СКАЧАТЬ of Aengus fly,

      And over the tiller and the prow,

      And waving white wings to and fro

      Awaken wanderings of light air

      To stir their coverlet and their hair.

      And poets found, old writers say,

      A yew tree where his body lay;

      But a wild apple hid the grass

      With its sweet blossom where hers was;

      And being in good heart, because

      A better time had come again

      After the deaths of many men,

      And that long fighting at the ford,

      They wrote on tablets of thin board,

      Made of the apple and the yew,

      All the love stories that they knew.

      Let rush and bird cry out their fill

      Of the harper’s daughter if they will,

      Beloved, I am not afraid of her.

      She is not wiser nor lovelier,

      And you are more high of heart than she,

      For all her wanderings over-sea;

      But I’d have bird and rush forget

      Those other two; for never yet

      Has lover lived, but longed to wive

      Like them that are no more alive.

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IN THE SEVEN WOODS

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      I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods

      Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees

      Hum in the lime tree flowers; and put away

      The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness

      That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile

      Tara uprooted, and new commonness

      Upon the throne and crying about the streets

      And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,

      Because it is alone of all things happy.

      I am contented for I know that Quiet

      Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart

      Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,

      Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs

      A cloudy quiver over Parc-na-Lee.

      August, 1902.

THE ARROW

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      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.

THE FOLLY OF BEING COMFORTED

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      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.

OLD MEMORY

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      I thought to fly to her when the end of day

      Awakens an old memory, and say,

      ‘Your strength, that is so lofty and fierce and kind,

      It might call up a new age, calling to mind

      The queens that were imagined long ago,

      Is but half yours: he kneaded in the dough

      Through the long years of youth, and who would have thought

      It all, and more than it all, would come to naught,

      And that dear words meant nothing?’ But enough,

      For when we have blamed the wind we can blame love;

      Or, if there needs be more, be nothing said

      That СКАЧАТЬ