The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

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NEVER GIVE ALL THE HEART

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      Never give all the heart, for love

      Will hardly seem worth thinking of

      To passionate women if it seem

      Certain, and they never dream

      That it fades out from kiss to kiss;

      For everything that’s lovely is

      But a brief dreamy kind delight.

      O never give the heart outright,

      For they, for all smooth lips can say,

      Have given their hearts up to the play.

      And who could play it well enough

      If deaf and dumb and blind with love?

      He that made this knows all the cost,

      For he gave all his heart and lost.

THE WITHERING OF THE BOUGHS

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      I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds,

      ‘Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,

      I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words,

      For the roads are unending, and there is no place to my mind.’

      The honey-pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill,

      And I fell asleep upon lonely Echtge of streams.

      No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;

      The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

      I know of the leafy paths that the witches take,

      Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool,

      And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake;

      I know where a dim moon drifts, where the Danaan kind

      Wind and unwind their dances when the light grows cool

      On the island lawns, their feet where the pale foam gleams.

      No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;

      The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

      I know of the sleepy country, where swans fly round

      Coupled with golden chains, and sing as they fly.

      A king and a queen are wandering there, and the sound

      Has made them so happy and hopeless, so deaf and so blind

      With wisdom, they wander till all the years have gone by;

      I know, and the curlew and peewit on Echtge of streams.

      No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;

      The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

ADAM’S CURSE

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      We sat together at one summer’s end,

      That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,

      And you and I, and talked of poetry.

      I said: ‘A line will take us hours maybe;

      Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,

      Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

      Better go down upon your marrow bones

      And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

      Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;

      For to articulate sweet sounds together

      Is to work harder than all these, and yet

      Be thought an idler by the noisy set

      Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

      The martyrs call the world.’

      That woman then

      Murmured with her young voice, for whose mild sake

      There’s many a one shall find out all heartache

      In finding that it’s young and mild and low:

      ‘There is one thing that all we women know,

      Although we never heard of it at school—

      That we must labour to be beautiful.’

      I said: ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing

      Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.

      There have been lovers who thought love should be

      So much compounded of high courtesy

      That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

      Precedents out of beautiful old books;

      Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

      We sat grown quiet at the name of love;

      We saw the last embers of daylight die,

      And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

      A moon, worn as if it had been a shell

      Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell

      About the stars and broke in days and years.

      I had a thought for no one’s but your ears;

      That you were beautiful, and that I strove

      To love you in the old high way of love;

      That СКАЧАТЬ