Poetry

epub:type="se:name.publication.book" xml:lang="la">Convito, but I may not have succeeded. It is hard for a writer, who has spent much labour upon his style, to remember that thought, which seems to him natural and logical like that style, may be unintelligible to others. The first excitement over, and the thought changed into settled conviction, his interest in simple, that is to say in normal emotion, is always I think increased; he is no longer looking for candlestick and matches but at the objects in the room.

I have given no account of Robartes himself, nor of his discovery of the explanation of Geraldus’ diagrams and pictures in the traditional knowledge of a certain obscure Arab tribe, for I hope that my selection from the great mass of his letters and table talk, which I owe to his friend John Aherne, may be published before, or at any rate but soon after this little book, which, like all hand-printed books will take a long time for the setting up and printing off and for the drying of the pages.

W. B. Yeats.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer

He	Opinion is not worth a rush; In this altar-piece the knight, Who grips his long spear so to push That dragon through the fading light, Loved the lady; and it’s plain The half-dead dragon was her thought, That every morning rose again And dug its claws and shrieked and fought. Could the impossible come to pass She would have time to turn her eyes, Her lover thought, upon the glass And on the instant would grow wise.
She	You mean they argued.
He	Put it so; But bear in mind your lover’s wage Is what your looking-glass can show, And that he will turn green with rage At all that is not pictured there.
She	May I not put myself to college?
He	Go pluck Athena by the hair; For what mere book can grant a knowledge With an impassioned gravity Appropriate to that beating breast, That vigorous thigh, that dreaming eye? And may the devil take the rest.
She	And must no beautiful woman be Learned like a man?
He	Paul Veronese And all his sacred company Imagined bodies all their days By the lagoon you love so much, For proud, soft, ceremonious proof That all must come to sight and touch; While Michael Angelo’s Sistine roof His “Morning” and his “Night” disclose How sinew that has been pulled tight, Or it may be loosened in repose, Can rule by supernatural right Yet be but sinew.
She	I have heard said There is great danger in the body.
He	Did God in portioning wine and bread Give man His thought or His mere body?
She	My wretched dragon is perplexed.
He	I have principles to prove me right. It follows from this Latin text That blest souls are not composite. And that all beautiful women may Live in uncomposite blessedness, And lead us to the like⁠—if they Will banish every thought, unless The lineaments that please their view When the long looking-glass is full, Even from the foot-sole think it too.
She	They say such different things at school.

Solomon and the Witch

And thus declared that Arab lady:
“Last night, where under the wild moon
On grassy mattress I had laid me,
Within my arms great Solomon,
I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue
Not his, not mine.” Who understood
What ever had been said, sighed, sung,
Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed,
Thereon explained: “A cockerel
Cried from a blossoming apple bough
Three hundred years before the Fall,
And never crew again till now,
And would not now but that he thought,
Chance being at one with Choice at last,
All that the brigand apple brought
And this foul world were dead at last.
He that crowed out eternity
Thought to have crowed it in again.
For though love has a spider’s eye
To find out some appropriate pain,
Aye, though all passion’s in the glance,
For every nerve: and tests a lover
With cruelties of Choice and Chance;
And when at last that murder’s over
Maybe the bride-bed brings despair
For each an imagined image brings
And finds a real image there;
Yet the world ends when these two things,
Though several, are a single light,
When oil and wick are burned in one;
Therefore a blessed moon last night
Gave Sheba to her Solomon.”

“Yet the world stays”: “If that be so,
Your cockerel found us in the wrong
Although he thought it worth a crow.
Maybe an image is too strong
Or maybe is not strong enough.”

“The night has fallen; not a sound
In the forbidden sacred grove
Unless a petal hit the ground,
Nor any human sight within it
But the crushed grass where we have lain;
And the moon is wilder every minute.
Oh, Solomon! let us try again.”

An Image from a Past Life23

He	Never until this night have I been stirred. The elaborate star-light has thrown reflections On the dark stream, Till all the eddies gleam; And thereupon there comes that scream From terrified, invisible beast or bird: Image of poignant recollection.
She	An image of my heart that is smitten through Out of all likelihood, or reason. And when at last, Youth’s bitterness being past, I had thought that all my days were cast Amid most lovely places; smitten as though It had not learned its lesson.
He	Why have you laid your hands upon my eyes? What can have suddenly alarmed you Whereon ’twere best My eyes should never rest? What is there but the slowly fading west, The river imaging the flashing skies, All that to this moment charmed you?
She	A sweetheart from another life floats there As though she had been forced to linger From vague distress Or arrogant loveliness, Merely to loosen out a tress Among the starry eddies of her hair Upon the paleness of a finger.
He	But why should you grow suddenly afraid And start⁠—I at your shoulder⁠— Imagining That any night could bring An image up, or anything Even to eyes that beauty had driven mad, But images to make me fonder.
She	Now she has thrown her arms above her head; Whether she threw them up to flout me, Or but to find, Now that no fingers bind, That her hair streams upon the wind, I do not know, that know I am afraid Of the hovering thing night brought me.

Under Saturn

Do not because this day I have grown saturnine
Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought
Because I have no other youth, can make me pine;
For