fall.
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2034 / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
In Memory of Major Robert Gregory1 Now that we're almost settled in our house I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us Beside a fire of turf0 in th' ancient tower,2 peat And having talked to some late hour 5 Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed: Discoverers of forgotten truth Or mere companions of my youth, All, all are in my thoughts to-night being dead. 2 Always we'd have the new friend meet the old IO And we are hurt if either friend seem cold, And there is salt to lengthen out the smart In the affections of our heart, And quarrels are blown up upon that head; But not a friend that I would bring 15 This night can set us quarrelling, For all that come into my mind are dead. 3 Lionel Johnson3 comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst; much falling he 20 Brooded upon sanctity Till all his Greek and Latin learning seemed A long blast upon the horn that brought A little nearer to his thought A measureless consummation that he dreamed. 4 25 And that enquiring man John Synge4 comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart 30 In a most desolate stony place, Towards nightfall upon a race Passionate and simple like his heart.
1. Robert Gregory (1881-1918) was the only child of Lady Augusta Gregory. The first printing of this elegy included the following note: '(Major Robert Gregory, R.F.C. [Royal Flying Corps], M.C. [Military Cross], Legion of Honour, was killed in action on the Italian Front, January 23, 1918).' For another of Yeats's poems on Gregory's death, see 'Representing the Great War' at Norton Literature Online. 2. In 1917 Yeats purchased the Norman tower Thor Ballylee, near Lady Gregory's home in Coole Park. While that residence was being renovated, Yeats and his wife were living in a house that Lady Gregory had lent Lhem.
3. English poet and scholar (1867?1902); he was 'much falling' (line 19) because of his drinking. 4. Irish playwright (1871-1909), associated with the Irish literary renaissance and the Abbey Theatre. When Yeats first met Synge, in 1896, he encouraged him to travel to the Aran Islands ('a most desolate and stony place') and write about its rural residents.
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IN MEMOR Y OF MAJO R RORER T GREGOR Y / 203 5 And then 1 think of old George Pollexfen,1* In muscular youth well known to Mayo6 men 35 For horsemanship at meets or at racecourses, That could have shown how pure-bred horses And solid men, for all their passion, live But as the outrageous stars incline By opposition, square and trine;7 40 Having grown sluggish and contemplative. 6 They were my close companions many a year, A portion of my mind and life, as it were, And now their breathless faces seem to look Out of some old picture-book; 45 I am accustomed to their lack of breath, But not that my dear friend's dear son, Our Sidney8 and our perfect man, Could share in that discourtesy of death. 7 For all things the delighted eye now sees 50 Were loved by him;9 the old storm-broken trees That cast their shadows upon road and bridge; The tower set on the stream's edge; The ford where drinking cattle make a stir Nightly, and startled by that sound 55 The water-hen must change her ground; He might have been your heartiest welcomer. 8 When with the Galway foxhounds he would ride From Castle Taylor to the Roxborough side1 Or Esserkelly plain, few kept his pace; 60 At Mooneen he had leaped a place So perilous that half the astonished meet Had shut their eyes; and where was it He rode a race without a bit? And yet his mind outran the horses' feet. 9 65 We dreamed that a great painter had been born2 To cold Clare' rock and Galway rock and thorn, To that stern colour and that delicate line That are our secret discipline
5. Yeats's maternal uncle (1839-1910), with 9. Robert Gregory encouraged Yeats to buy the whom he had spent holidays in Sligo as a young tower. man. 1. Big country houses in County Galway. Roxbor6. County in western Ireland. ough was Lady Gregory's childhood home. 7. Terms from astrology, in which both Yeats and 2. 'Robert Gregory painted the Burren Hills and his uncle were interested. thereby found what promised to grow into a great 8. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), English poet style, but he had hardly found it before he was and exemplar of the 'Renaissance man'; like Greg-killed' (Yeats, 'Ireland and the Arts'). ory, he was killed in battle. 3. County south of Galway.
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2036 / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Wherein the gazing heart doubles her might. 70 Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, And yet he had the intensity To have published all to be a world's delight. 10 What other could so well have counselled us In all lovely intricacies of a house 75 As he that practised or that understood All work in metal or in wood, In moulded plaster or in carven stone? Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, And all he did done perfectly so As though he had but that one trade alone. 11 Some burn damp faggots,4 others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out 85 Because the work had finished in that flare. Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, As 'twere all life's epitome, What made us dream that he could comb grey hair? 12 I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind 90 That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved Or boyish intellect approved, With some appropriate commentary on each; Until imagination brought 95 A fitter welcome; but a thought Of that late death took all my heart for speech. June 1918 1918
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre1
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 5 The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.2
4. Bundles of sticks. of the character of the next age, is represented by 1. Yeats's term (pronounced with a hard g) for a the coming of one gyre to its place of greatest spiraling motion in the shape of a cone. He envi- expansion and of the other to that of its greatest sions the two-thousand-year cycle of the Christian contraction' [Yeats's note]. age as spiraling toward its end and the next histor-2. The poem was written in January 1919, in the ical cycle as beginning after a violent reversal: 'the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revoend of an age, which always receives the revelation lution and on the eve of the Anglo-Irish War.
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A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER / 203 7
