IN THE SEVEN WOODS

Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age

BY

W. B. YEATS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.

1903

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1903, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up, electrotyped, and published August, 1903.

J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass. U.S.A.

IN THE SEVEN WOODS

1

IN THE SEVEN WOODS: BEING POEMS CHIEFLY OF THE IRISH HEROIC AGE.

IN THE SEVEN WOODS.

I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods

Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees

Hum in the lime tree flowers; and put away

The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness

That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile

Tara uprooted, and new commonness

Upon the throne and crying about the streets

And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,

Because it is alone of all things happy.

I am contented for I know that Quiet

Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart

Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,

Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs

A cloudy quiver over Parc-na-Lee.

August, 1902.

2

THE OLD AGE OF QUEEN MAEVE.

Maeve the great queen was pacing to and fro,

Between the walls covered with beaten bronze,

In her high house at Cruachan; the long hearth,

Flickering with ash and hazel, but half showed

Where the tired horse-boys lay upon the rushes,

Or on the benches underneath the walls,

In comfortable sleep; all living slept

But that great queen, who more than half the night

Had paced from door to fire and fire to door.

Though now in her old age, in her young age

She had been beautiful in that old way

That’s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone

And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all

But soft beauty and indolent desire.

She could have called over the rim of the world

Whatever woman’s lover had hit her fancy,

And yet had been great bodied and great limbed,

Fashioned to be the mother of strong children;

And she’d had lucky eyes and a high heart,

And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,

3

At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,

Sudden and laughing.

O unquiet heart,

Why do you praise another, praising her,

As if there were no tale but your own tale

Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound?

Have I not bid you tell of that great queen

Who has been buried some two thousand years?

When night was at its deepest, a wild goose

Cried from the porter’s lodge, and with long clamour

Shook the ale horns and shields upon their hooks;

But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power

Had filled the house with Druid heaviness;

And wondering who of the many changing Sidhe

Had come as in the old times to counsel her,

Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall being old,

To that small chamber by the outer gate.

The porter slept although he sat upright

With still and stony limbs and open eyes.

Maeve waited, and when that ear-piercing noise

4

Broke from his parted lips and broke again,

She laid a hand on either of his shoulders,

And shook him wide awake, and bid him say

Who of the wandering many-changing ones

Had troubled his sleep. But all he had to say

Was that, the air being heavy and the dogs

More still than they had been for a good month,

He had fallen asleep, and, though he had dreamed nothing,

He could remember when he had had fine dreams.

It was before the time of the great war

Over the White-Horned Bull, and the Brown Bull.

She turned away; he turned again to sleep

That no god troubled now, and, wondering

What matters were afoot among the Sidhe,

Maeve walked through that great hall, and with a sigh

Lifted the curtain of her sleeping room,

Remembering that she too had seemed divine

To many thousand eyes, and to her own

5

One that the generations had long waited

That work too difficult for mortal hands

Might be accomplished. Bunching the curtain up

She saw her husband Ailell sleeping there,

And thought of days when he’d had a straight body,

And of that famous Fergus, Nessa’s husband,

Who had been the lover of her middle life.

Suddenly Ailell spoke out of his sleep,

And not with his own voice or a man’s voice,

But with the burning, live, unshaken voice

Of those that it may be can never age.

He said, ‘High Queen of Cruachan and Mag Ai

A king of the Great Plain would speak with you.’

And with glad voice Maeve answered him, ‘What King

Of the far wandering shadows has come to me?

As in the old days when they would come and go

About my threshold to counsel and to help.’

The parted lips replied, ‘I seek your help,

For I am Aengus and I am crossed in love.’

6

‘How may a mortal whose life gutters out

Help them that wander with hand clasping hand

By rivers where nor rain nor hail has dimmed

Their haughty images, that cannot fade

Although their beauty’s like a hollow dream.’

‘I come from the undimmed rivers to bid you call

The children of the Maines out of sleep,

And set them digging into Anbual’s hill.

We shadows, while they uproot his earthy house,

Will overthrow his shadows and carry off

Caer, his blue eyed daughter that I love.

I helped your fathers when they built these walls

And I would have your help in my great need,

Queen of high Cruachan.’

‘I obey your will

With speedy feet and a most thankful heart:

For you have been, O Aengus of the birds,

Our giver of good counsel and good luck.’

And with a groan, as if the mortal breath

Could but awaken sadly upon lips

7

That happier breath had moved, her husband turned

Face downward, tossing in a troubled sleep;

But Maeve, and not with a slow feeble foot,

Came to the threshold of the painted house,

Where her grandchildren slept, and cried aloud,

Until the pillared dark began to stir

With shouting and the clang of unhooked arms.

She told them of the many-changing ones;

And all that night, and all through the next day

To middle night, they dug into the hill.

At middle night great cats with silver claws,

Bodies of shadow and blind eyes like pearls,

Came up out of the hole, and red-eared hounds

With long white bodies came out of the air

Suddenly, and ran at them and harried them.

The Maines’ children dropped their spades, and stood

With quaking joints and terror strucken faces,

Till Maeve called out, ‘These are but common men.

8

The Maines’ children have not dropped their spades

Because Earth crazy for its broken power

Casts up a show and the winds answer it

With holy shadows.’ Her high heart was glad,

And when the uproar ran along the grass

She followed with light footfall in the midst,

Till it died out where an old thorn tree stood.

Friend of these many years, you too had stood

With equal courage in that whirling rout;

For you, although you’ve not her wandering heart,

Have all that greatness, and not hers alone.

For there is no high story about queens

In any ancient book but tells of you,

And when I’ve heard how they grew old and died

Or fell into unhappiness I’ve said;

‘She will grow old and die and she has wept!’

And when I’d write it out anew, the words,

Half crazy with the thought, She too has wept!

Outrun the measure.

9

I’d tell of that great queen

Who stood amid a silence by the thorn

Until two lovers came out of the air

With bodies made out of soft fire. The one

About whose face birds wagged their fiery wings

Said, ‘Aengus and his sweetheart give their thanks

To Maeve and to Maeve’s household, owing all

In owing them the bride-bed that gives peace.’

Then Maeve, ‘O Aengus, Master of all lovers,

A thousand years ago you held high talk

With the first kings of many pillared Cruachan.

O when will you grow weary.’

They had vanished,

But out of the dark air over her head there came

A murmur of soft words and meeting lips.

BAILE AND AILLINN.

Argument. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but

Aengus, the Master of Love, wishing them to be

happy in his own land among the dead, told to

each a story of the other’s death, so that their

hearts were broken and they died.

10

I hardly hear the curlew cry,

Nor the grey rush when wind is high,

Before my thoughts begin to run

On the heir of Ulad, Buan’s son,

Baile who had the honey mouth,

And that mild woman of the south,

Aillinn, who was King Lugaid’s heir.

Their love was never drowned in care

Of this or that thing, nor grew cold

Because their bodies had grown old;

Being forbid to marry on earth

They blossomed to immortal mirth.

About the time when Christ was born,

When the long wars for the White Horn

And the Brown Bull had not yet come,

Young Baile Honey-Mouth, whom some

Called rather Baile Little-Land,

Rode out of Emain with a band

Of harpers and young men, and they

Imagined, as they struck the way

To many pastured Muirthemne,

11

That all things fell out happily

And there, for all that fools had said,

Baile and Aillinn would be wed.

They found an old man running there,

He had ragged long grass-yellow hair;

He had knees that stuck out of his hose;

He had puddle water in his shoes;

He had half a cloak to keep him dry;

Although he had a squirrel’s eye.

O wandering birds and rushy beds

You put such folly in our heads

With all this crying in the wind

No common love is to our mind,

And our poor Kate or Nan is less

Than any whose unhappiness

Awoke the harp strings long ago.

Yet they that know all things but know

That all life had to give us is

A child’s laughter, a woman’s kiss.

12

Who was it put so great a scorn

In the grey reeds that night and morn

Are trodden and broken by the herds,

And in the light bodies of birds

That north wind tumbles to and fro

And pinches among hail and snow?

That runner said, ‘I am from the south;

I run to Baile Honey-Mouth

To tell him how the girl Aillinn

Rode from the country of her kin

And old and young men rode with her:

For all that country had been astir

If anybody half as fair

Had chosen a husband anywhere

But where it could see her every day.

When they had ridden a little way

An old man caught the horse’s head

With “You must home again and wed

With somebody in your own land.”

A young man cried and kissed her hand

“O lady, wed with one of us;”

13

And when no face grew piteous

For any gentle thing she spake

She fell and died of the heart-break.’

Because a lover’s heart’s worn out

Being tumbled and blown about

By its own blind imagining,

And will believe that anything

That is bad enough to be true, is true,

Baile’s heart was broken in two;

And he being laid upon green boughs

Was carried to the goodly house

Where the Hound of Ulad sat before

The brazen pillars of his door;

His face bowed low to weep the end

Of the harper’s daughter and her friend;

For although years had passed away

He always wept them on that day,

For on that day they had been betrayed;

And now that Honey-Mouth is laid

Under a cairn of sleepy stone

Before his eyes, he has tears for none,

14

Although he is carrying stone, but two

For whom the cairn’s but heaped anew.

We hold because our memory is

So full of that thing and of this

That out of sight is out of mind.

But the grey rush under the wind

And the grey bird with crooked bill

Have such long memories that they still

Remember Deirdre and her man,

And when we walk with Kate or Nan

About the windy water side

Our heart can hear the voices chide.

How could we be so soon content

Who know the way that Naoise went?

And they have news of Deirdre’s eyes

Who being lovely was so wise,

Ah wise, my heart knows well how wise.

Now had that old gaunt crafty one,

Gathering his cloak about him, run

Where Aillinn rode with waiting maids

Who amid leafy lights and shades

15

Dreamed of the hands that would unlace

Their bodices in some dim place

When they had come to the marriage bed;

And harpers pondering with bowed head

A music that had thought enough

Of the ebb of all things to make love

Grow gentle without sorrowings;

And leather-coated men with slings

Who peered about on every side;

And amid leafy light he cried,

‘He is well out of wind and wave,

They have heaped the stones above his grave

In Muirthemne and over it

In changeless Ogham letters writ

Baile that was of Rury’s seed.

But the gods long ago decreed

No waiting maid should ever spread

Baile and Aillinn’s marriage bed,

For they should clip and clip again

Where wild bees hive on the Great Plain.

Therefore it is but little news

That put this hurry in my shoes.’

16

And hurrying to the south he came

To that high hill the herdsmen name

The Hill Seat of Leighin, because

Some god or king had made the laws

That held the land together there,

In old times among the clouds of the air.

That old man climbed; the day grew dim;

Two swans came flying up to him

Linked by a gold chain each to each

And with low murmuring laughing speech

Alighted on the windy grass.

They knew him: his changed body was

Tall, proud and ruddy, and light wings

Were hovering over the harp strings

That Etain, Midhir’s wife, had wove

In the hid place, being crazed by love.

What shall I call them? fish that swim

Scale rubbing scale where light is dim

By a broad water-lily leaf;

Or mice in the one wheaten sheaf

Forgotten at the threshing place;

17

Or birds lost in the one clear space

Of morning light in a dim sky;

Or it may be, the eyelids of one eye

Or the door pillars of one house,

Or two sweet blossoming apple boughs

That have one shadow on the ground;

Or the two strings that made one sound

Where that wise harper’s finger ran;

For this young girl and this young man

Have happiness without an end

Because they have made so good a friend.

They know all wonders, for they pass

The towery gates of Gorias

And Findrias and Falias

And long-forgotten Murias,

Among the giant kings whose hoard

Cauldron and spear and stone and sword

Was robbed before Earth gave the wheat;

Wandering from broken street to street

They come where some huge watcher is

And tremble with their love and kiss.

18

They know undying things, for they

Wander where earth withers away,

Though nothing troubles the great streams

But light from the pale stars, and gleams

From the holy orchards, where there is none

But fruit that is of precious stone,

Or apples of the sun and moon.

What were our praise to them: they eat

Quiet’s wild heart, like daily meat,

Who when night thickens are afloat

On dappled skins in a glass boat

Far out under a windless sky,

While over them birds of Aengus fly,

And over the tiller and the prow

And waving white wings to and fro

Awaken wanderings of light air

To stir their coverlet and their hair.

And poets found, old writers say,

A yew tree where his body lay,

But a wild apple hid the grass

19

With its sweet blossom where hers was;

And being in good heart, because

A better time had come again

After the deaths of many men,

And that long fighting at the ford,

They wrote on tablets of thin board,

Made of the apple and the yew,

All the love stories that they knew.

Let rush and bird cry out their fill

Of the harper’s daughter if they will,

Beloved, I am not afraid of her

She is not wiser nor lovelier,

And you are more high of heart than she

For all her wanderings over-sea;

But I’d have bird and rush forget

Those other two, for never yet

Has lover lived but longed to wive

Like them that are no more alive.

20

THE ARROW.

I thought of your beauty and this arrow

Made out of a wild thought is in my marrow.

There’s no man may look upon her, no man,

As when newly grown to be a woman,

Blossom pale, she pulled down the pale blossom

At the moth hour and hid it in her bosom.

This beauty’s kinder yet for a reason

I could weep that the old is out of season.

THE FOLLY OF BEING COMFORTED.

One that is ever kind said yesterday:

‘Your well beloved’s hair has threads of grey

And little shadows come about her eyes;

Time can but make it easier to be wise

Though now it’s hard, till trouble is at an end;

And so be patient, be wise and patient, friend.’

But heart, there is no comfort, not a grain.

Time can but make her beauty over again

Because of that great nobleness of hers;

The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs

21

Burns but more clearly; O she had not these ways

When all the wild summer was in her gaze.

O heart, O heart, if she’d but turn her head,

You’d know the folly of being comforted.

THE WITHERING OF THE BOUGHS.

I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds,

‘Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,

I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words,

For the roads are unending and there is no place to my mind.’

The honey-pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill

And I fell asleep upon lonely Echtge of streams;

No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind,

The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

I know of the leafy paths that the witches take,

Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool,

22

And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake;

And of apple islands where the Danaan kind

Wind and unwind their dances when the light grows cool

On the island lawns, their feet where the pale foam gleams;

No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind,

The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

I know of the sleepy country, where swans fly round

Coupled with golden chains and sing as they fly,

A king and a queen are wandering there, and the sound

Has made them so happy and hopeless, so deaf and so blind

With wisdom, they wander till all the years have gone by;

23

I know, and the curlew and peewit on Echtge of streams;

No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind,

The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

ADAM’S CURSE.

We sat together at one summer’s end

That beautiful mild woman your close friend

And you and I, and talked of poetry.

I said ‘a line will take us hours maybe,

Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Better go down upon your marrow bones

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

Like an old pauper in all kinds of weather;

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

The martyrs call the world.’

24

That woman then

Murmured with her young voice, for whose mild sake

There’s many a one shall find out all heartache

In finding that it’s young and mild and low.

‘There is one thing that all we women know

Although we never heard of it at school,

That we must labour to be beautiful.’

I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing

Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be

So much compounded of high courtesy

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

Precedents out of beautiful old books;

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love.

We saw the last embers of daylight die

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell

25

Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell

About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears;

That you were beautiful and that I strove

To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown

As weary hearted as that hollow moon.

THE SONG OF RED HANRAHAN.

The old brown thorn trees break in two high over Cummen Strand

Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand,

Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies;

But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes

Of Cathleen the daughter of Houlihan.

The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knocknarea

26

And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say.

Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat;

But we have all bent low and low and kissed the quiet feet

Of Cathleen the daughter of Houlihan.

The yellow pool has overflowed high up on Clooth-na-Bare,

For the wet winds are blowing out of the clinging air;

Like heavy flooded waters our bodies and our blood;

But purer than a tall candle before the Holy Rood

Is Cathleen the daughter of Houlihan.

THE OLD MEN ADMIRING THEMSELVES IN THE WATER.

I heard the old, old men say

‘Everything alters,

And one by one we drop away.’

27

They had hands like claws, and their knees

Were twisted like the old thorn trees

By the waters.

I heard the old, old men say

‘All that’s beautiful drifts away

Like the waters.’

UNDER THE MOON.

I have no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde;

Nor Avalon the grass green hollow, nor Joyous Isle,

Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while,

Nor Ulad when Naoise had thrown a sail upon the wind,

Nor lands that seem too dim to be burdens on the heart,