The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

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СКАЧАТЬ face that seemed wrought out of moonlit vapours,

      And a sad mouth, that fear made tremulous

      As any ruddy moth, looked down on us;

      And she with a wave-rusted chain was tied

      To two old eagles, full of ancient pride,

      That with dim eyeballs stood on either side.

      Few feathers were on their dishevelled wings,

      For their dim minds were with the ancient things.

      ‘I bring deliverance,’ pearl-pale Niamh said.

      ‘Neither the living, nor the unlabouring dead,

      Nor the high gods who never lived, may fight

      My enemy and hope; demons for fright

      Jabber and scream about him in the night;

      For he is strong and crafty as the seas

      That sprang under the Seven Hazel Trees.

      And I must needs endure and hate and weep,

      Until the gods and demons drop asleep,

      Hearing Aed touch the mournful strings of gold.’

      ‘Is he so dreadful?’

      ‘Be not over-bold,

      But flee while you may flee from him.’

      Then I:

      ‘This demon shall be pierced and drop and die,

      And his loose bulk be thrown in the loud tide.’

      ‘Flee from him,’ pearl-pale Niamh weeping cried,

      ‘For all men flee the demons’; but moved not,

      Nor shook my firm and spacious soul one jot;

      There was no mightier soul of Heber’s line;

      Now it is old and mouse-like: for a sign

      I burst the chain: still earless, nerveless, blind,

      Wrapped in the things of the unhuman mind,

      In some dim memory or ancient mood

      Still earless, nerveless, blind, the eagles stood.

      And then we climbed the stair to a high door,

      A hundred horsemen on the basalt floor

      Beneath had paced content: we held our way

      And stood within: clothed in a misty ray

      I saw a foam-white seagull drift and float

      Under the roof, and with a straining throat

      Shouted, and hailed him: he hung there a star,

      For no man’s cry shall ever mount so far;

      Not even your God could have thrown down that hall;

      Stabling His unloosed lightnings in their stall,

      He had sat down and sighed with cumbered heart,

      As though His hour were come.

      We sought the part

      That was most distant from the door; green slime

      Made the way slippery, and time on time

      Showed prints of sea-born scales, while down through it

      The captives’ journeys to and fro were writ

      Like a small river, and, where feet touched, came

      A momentary gleam of phosphorus flame.

      Under the deepest shadows of the hall

      That maiden found a ring hung on the wall,

      And in the ring a torch, and with its flare

      Making a world about her in the air,

      Passed under a dim doorway, out of sight,

      And came again, holding a second light

      Burning between her fingers, and in mine

      Laid it and sighed: I held a sword whose shine

      No centuries could dim: and a word ran

      Thereon in Ogham letters, ‘Mananan’:

      That sea-god’s name, who in a deep content

      Sprang dripping, and, with captive demons sent

      Out of the seven-fold seas, built the dark hall

      Rooted in foam and clouds, and cried to all

      The mightier masters of a mightier race;

      And at his cry there came no milk-pale face

      Under a crown of thorns and dark with blood,

      But only exultant faces.

      Niamh stood

      With bowed head, trembling when the white blade shone,

      But she whose hours of tenderness were gone

      Had neither hope nor fear. I bade them hide

      Under the shadows till the tumults died

      Of the loud crashing and earth-shaking fight,

      Lest they should look upon some dreadful sight;

      And thrust the torch between the slimy flags.

      A dome made out of endless carven jags,

      Where shadowy face flowed into shadowy face,

      Looked down on me; and in the self-same place

      I waited hour by hour, and the high dome

      Windowless, pillarless, multitudinous home

      Of faces, waited; and the leisured gaze

      Was loaded with the memory of days

      Buried and mighty: when through the great door

      The СКАЧАТЬ