45 Seems a water-course or an avalanche, Or lofty slope where it still snows Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch Sweetens the little half-way house Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
50 Delight to imagine them seated there; There, on the mountain and the sky, On all the tragic scene they stare. One asks for mournful melodies; Accomplished fingers begin to play.
55 Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.
July 1936 1938
Under Ben Bulben1
1
Swear by what the Sages spoke Round the Mareotic Lake2 That the Witch of Atlas knew, Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.
5. Athenian sculptor (5th century b.c.e.) , suppos-of it, in Drumcliff churchyard. edly the originator of the Corinthian column and 2. Lake Mareotis, near Alexandria, Egypt, was an of the use of the running drill to imitate folds in ancient center of Christian Neoplatonism and of drapery in statues. Yeats wrote of him: 'With Cal-neo- Pythagorean philosophy. The lake is menlimachus pure Ionic revives again . . . and upon tioned in Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem 'The Witch the only example of his work known to us, a marble of Atlas.' In an essay on Shelley, Yeats interprets chair, a Persian is represented, and may one not the witch as a symbol of timeless, absolute beauty; discover a Persian symbol in that bronze lamp, passing in a boat by this and another lake, she 'sees shaped like a palm . . . ? But he was an archaistic all human life shadowed upon its waters . . . and workman, and those who set him to work brought because she can see the reality of things she is back public life to an older form' (A Vision). described as journeying 'in the calm depths' of 'the I. A mountain near Sligo; Yeats's grave is in sight wide lake' we journey over unpiloted.'
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204 8 / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
5
Swear by those horsemen, by those women, Complexion and form prove superhuman,3 That pale, long visaged company That airs an immortality Completeness of their passions won;
10 Now they ride the wintry dawn Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.
Here's the gist of what they mean.
2
Many times man lives and dies Between his two eternities,
is That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man dies in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead, A brief parting from those dear
20 Is the worst man has to fear. Though grave-diggers' toil is long, Sharp their spades, their muscle strong, They but thrust their buried men Back in the human mind again.
3
25 You that Mitchel's prayer have heard 'Send war in our time, O Lord!'4 Know that when all words are said And a man is fighting mad, Something drops from eyes long blind
30 He completes his partial mind, For an instant stands at ease, Laughs aloud, his heart at peace, Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence
35 Before he can accomplish fate Know his work or choose his mate.
4
Poet and sculptor do the work Nor let the modish painter shirk What his great forefathers did,
40 Bring the soul of man to God, Make him fill the cradles right.
3. Superhuman beings or fairies, like the Sidhe, 4. From Jail Journal, by the Irish nationalist John believed to ride through the countryside near Ben Mitchel (1815-1875). Bulben.
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UNDER BEN BULBEN / 2049
Measurement began our might: Forms a stark Egyptian thought, Forms that gentler Phidias5 wrought.
45 Michael Angelo left a proof On the Sistine Chapel roof, Where but half-awakened Adam Can disturb globe- trotting Madam Till her bowels are in heat,
so Proof that there's a purpose set Before the secret working mind: Profane perfection of mankind.
Quattrocento6 put in paint,
On backgrounds for a God or Saint,
55 Gardens where a soul's at ease; Where everything that meets the eye Flowers and grass and cloudless sky Resemble forms that are, or seem When sleepers wake and yet still dream,
60 And when it's vanished still declare, With only bed and bedstead there, That Heavens had opened.
Gyres7 run on; When that greater dream had gone Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude'
65 Prepared a rest for the people of God, Palmer's9 phrase, but after that Confusion fell upon our thought.
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