Responsibilities and Other Poems E-Book

W.b.yeats

• Herausgeber: Interactive Media
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Responsibilities and Other Poems

Leseprobe

W. B. Yeats

Responsibilities

and Other Poems

New Edition

LONDON ∙ NEW YORK ∙ TORONTO ∙ SAO PAULO ∙ MOSCOW

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New Edition

Published by Sovereign Classic

This Edition

First published in 2019

Copyright © 2019 Sovereign Classic

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 9781787360013

Contents

RESPONSIBILITIES

THE GREY ROCK

THE TWO KINGS

TO A WEALTHY MAN WHO PROMISED A SECOND SUBSCRIPTION TO THE DUBLIN MUNICIPAL GALLERY IF IT WERE PROVED THE PEOPLE WANTED PICTURES

SEPTEMBER 1913

TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO NOTHING

PAUDEEN

TO A SHADE

WHEN HELEN LIVED

THE ATTACK ON ‘THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD,’ 1907

THE THREE BEGGARS

THE THREE HERMITS

BEGGAR TO BEGGAR CRIED

THE WELL AND THE TREE

RUNNING TO PARADISE

THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN

THE PLAYER QUEEN

THE REALISTS

THE WITCH I

THE PEACOCK II

THE MOUNTAIN TOMB

TO A CHILD DANCING IN THE WIND

A MEMORY OF YOUTH

FALLEN MAJESTY

FRIENDS

THE COLD HEAVEN

AN APPOINTMENT

THE MAGI I

THE DOLLS II

A COAT

RESPONSIBILITIES

‘In dreams begins responsibility.’

Old Play.

‘How am I fallen from myself, for a long time now

I have not seen the Prince of Chang in my dreams.’

Khoung-fou-tseu.

Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain

Somewhere in ear-shot for the story’s end,

Old Dublin merchant ‘free of ten and four’

Or trading out of Galway into Spain;

And country scholar, Robert Emmet’s friend,

A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;

Traders or soldiers who have left me blood

That has not passed through any huxter’s loin,

Pardon, and you that did not weigh the cost,

Old Butlers when you took to horse and stood

Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne

Till your bad master blenched and all was lost;

You merchant skipper that leaped overboard

After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay,

You most of all, silent and fierce old man

Because you were the spectacle that stirred

My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say

‘Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun’;

Pardon that for a barren passion’s sake,

Although I have come close on forty-nine

I have no child, I have nothing but a book,

Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine.

January 1914.

THE GREY ROCK

Poets with whom I learned my trade,

Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,

Here’s an old story I’ve re-made,

Imagining ‘twould better please

Your ears than stories now in fashion,

Though you may think I waste my breath

Pretending that there can be passion

That has more life in it than death,

And though at bottling of your wine

The bow-legged Goban had no say;

The moral’s yours because it’s mine.

When cups went round at close of day—

Is not that how good stories run?—

Somewhere within some hollow hill,

If books speak truth in Slievenamon,

But let that be, the gods were still

And sleepy, having had their meal,

And smoky torches made a glare

On painted pillars, on a deal

Of fiddles and of flutes hung there

By the ancient holy hands that brought them

From murmuring Murias, on cups—

Old Goban hammered them and wrought them,

And put his pattern round their tops

To hold the wine they buy of him.

But from the juice that made them wise

All those had lifted up the dim

Imaginations of their eyes,

For one that was like woman made

Before their sleepy eyelids ran

And trembling with her passion said,

‘Come out and dig for a dead man,

Who’s burrowing somewhere in the ground,

And mock him to his face and then

Hollo him on with horse and hound,

For he is the worst of all dead men.’

We should be dazed and terror struck,

If we but saw in dreams that room,

Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck

That emptied all our days to come.

I knew a woman none could please,

Because she dreamed when but a child