That woman's days were spent In ignorant good-will, Her nights in argument
20 Until her voice grew shrill. What voice more sweet than hers When, young and beautiful, She rode to harriers?' This man had kept a school
25 And rode our winged horse;4 This other his helper and friend5 Was coming into his force; He might have won fame in the end, So sensitive his nature seemed,
30 So daring and sweet his thought.
1. During the Easter Rising of 1916, Irish nation-2. The multicolored clothes of a jester. alists revolted against the British government and 3. Constance Gore-Booth (1868-1927), after- proclaimed an Irish Republic. Nearly sixteen hun-ward Countess Markievicz, took a prominent role dred Irish Volunteers and two hundred members in the uprising. Her death sentence was reduced of the Citizen Army seized buildings and a park in to imprisonment. The other rebel leaders to whom Dublin. The rebellion began on Easter Monday, Yeats refers were executed. April 24, 1916, and was crushed in six days. Over 4. Padraic Pearse (1879-1916), founder of a boys' the next two weeks fifteen of the leaders were exe-school in Dublin and poet?hence the 'winged cuted by firing squad. Yeats knew the chief nation-horse,' or Pegasus, the horse of the Muses. alist leaders personally. For more on the Easter 5. Thomas MacDonagh (1878-1916), poet and Rising, see 'Imagining Ireland' at Norton Litera-dramatist. ture Online.
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2032 / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
This other man I had dreamed A drunken, vainglorious lout.6 He had done most bitter wrong To some who are near my heart,
35 Yet I number him in the song; He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; He, too, has been changed in his turn, Transformed utterly:
40 A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream.
45 The horse that comes from the road, The rider, the birds that range From cloud to tumbling cloud, Minute by minute they change; A shadow of cloud on the stream
50 Changes minute by minute; A horse-hoof slides on the brim, And a horse plashes within it; The long- legged moor-hens dive, And hens to moor-cocks call;
55 Minute by minute they live: The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. 0 when may it suffice?
60 That is Heaven's part, our part To murmur name upon name, As a mother names her child When sleep at last has come On limbs that had run wild.
65 What is it but nightfall? No, no, not night but death; Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith For all that is done and said.7
70 We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead; And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? 1 write it out in a verse?
75 MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly8 and Pearse
6. Major John MacBride (1865-1916), Irish rev-World War I had suspended it, promising to impleolutionary and estranged husband of Maud ment it later. Gonne. 8. James Connolly (1870-1916), a trade-union 7. In 1914 the English government had passed organizer and military commander of the rebellion. Home Rule for Ireland into law, but because of
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THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE / 2033
Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly:
so A terrible beauty is born.
May-Sept. 1916 1916, 1920
The Wild Swans at Coole1
The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count;2 I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore.
15 All's changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
20 They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still.
25 But now they drift on the still water, Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build, By what lake's edge or pool Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
30 To find they have flown away?
Oct. 1916
1. Coole Park, in County Galway, was the estate 2. Yeats made his first long visit to Coole in 1897; of the Irish playwright Lady Augusta Gregory from then on he spent summers there, often stay( 1852-1932). ing into the
