3Flies straight into the moon. Lo! where he steers
Across the pallid globe and surely nears
In that white land some harbour of dear dreams!
False mocking fancy! Once I too could dream, Who now can only see with vulgar eye
That he's no nearer to the moon than I
And she's a stone that catches the sun's beam.
What call have I to dream of anything? I am a wolf. Back to the world again,
And speech of fellow-brutes that once were men
Our throats can bark for slaughter: cannot sing.
III. The Satyr
When the flowery hands of spring
Forth their woodland riches fling,
Through the meadows, through the valleys
Goes the satyr carolling.
From the mountain and the moor, Forest green and ocean shore
All the faerie kin he rallies
Making music evermore.
See! the shaggy pelt doth grow On his twisted shanks below, And his dreadful feet are cloven
Though his brow be white as snow--
Though his brow be clear and white
And beneath it fancies bright,
Wisdom and high thoughts are woven
And the musics of delight,
Though his temples too be fair Yet two horns are growing there Bursting forth to part asunder All the riches of his hair.
Faerie maidens he may meet
Fly the horns and cloven feet,
But, his sad brown eyes with wonder
Seeing-stay from their retreat.
IV. Victory
Roland is dead, Cuchulain's crest is low,
The battered war-rear wastes and turns to rust, And Helen's eyes and Iseult's lips are dust
And dust the shoulders and the breasts of snow.
4
The faerie people from our woods are gone, No Dryads have I found in all our trees,
No Triton blows his horn about our seas
And Arthur sleeps far hence in Avalon.
The ancient songs they wither as the grass
And waste as doth a garment waxen old,
All poets have been fools who thought to mould
A monument more durable than brass.
For these decay: but not for that decays
The yearning, high, rebellious spirit of man
That never rested yet since life began
From striving with red Nature and her ways.
Now in the filth of war, the baresark shout
Of battle, it is vexed. And yet so oft
Out of the deeps, of old, it rose aloft
That they who watch the ages may not doubt.
Though often bruised, oft broken by the rod, Yet, like the phoenix, from each fiery bed Higher the stricken spirit lifts its head
And higher-till the beast become a god.
V. Irish Nocturne
Now the grey mist comes creeping up From the waste ocean's weedy strand And fills the valley, as a cup
If filled of evil drink in a wizard's hand;
And the trees fade out of sight, Like dreary ghosts unhealthily, Into the damp, pale night,
Till you almost think that a clearer eye could see Some shape come up of a demon seeking apart His meat, as Grendel sought in Harte
The thanes that sat by the wintry log-- Grendel or the shadowy mass
Of Balor, or the man with the face of clay, The grey, grey walker who used to pass Over the rock-arch nightly to his prey.
But here at the dumb, slow stream where the willows hang, With never a wind to blow the mists apart,
Bitter and bitter it is for thee. O my heart, Looking upon this land, where poets sang, Thus with the dreary shroud Unwholesome, over it spread,
And knowing the fog and the cloud
In her people's heart and head
Even as it lies for ever upon her coasts
Making them dim and dreamy lest her sons should ever arise
And remember all their boasts;
For I know that the colourless skies
5
And the blurred horizons breed
Lonely desire and many words and brooding and never a deed.
VI. Spooks
Last night I dreamed that I was come again Unto the house where my beloved dwells After long years of wandering and pain.
And I stood out beneath the drenching rain
And all the street was bare, and black with night, But in my true love's house was warmth and light.
Yet I could not draw near nor enter in, And long I wondered if some secret sin Or old, unhappy anger held me fast;
Till suddenly it came into my head
That I was killed long since and lying dead-- Only a homeless wraith that way had passed.
So thus I found my true love's house again And stood unseen amid the winter night And the lamp burned within, a rosy light, And the wet street was shining in the rain.
VII. Apology
If men should ask, Despoina, why I tell
Of nothing glad nor noble in my verse
To lighten hearts beneath this present curse
And build a heaven of dreams in real hell,
Go you to them and speak among them thus: "There were no greater grief than to recall,
Down in the rotting grave where the lithe
