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

For one throb of the artery, While on that old grey stone I Sat Under the old wind-broken tree, I knew that One is animate, Mankind inanimate phantasy.

Although I can see him still. The freckled man who goes To a grey place on a hill In grey Connemara clothes At dawn to cast his flies, It’s long since I began To

Come swish around, my pretty punk, And keep me dancing still That I may stay a sober man Although I drink my fill. Sobriety is a jewel That I do much adore; And therefore

Fasten your hair with a golden pin, And bind up every wandering tress; I bade my heart build these poor rhymes: It worked at them, day out, day in, Building a sorrowful loveliness Out

O but there is wisdom In what the sages said; But stretch that body for a while And lay down that head Till I have told the sages Where man is comforted. How could

When my arms wrap you round I press My heart upon the loveliness That has long faded from the world; The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled In shadowy pools, when armies fled; The

I cried when the moon was mutmuring 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,

If Michael, leader of God’s host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven’s door-post He would his deeds forget. Brooding no more upon God’s wars In his divine homestead,

The host is riding from Knocknarea And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare; Caoilte tossing his burning hair, And Niamh calling Away, come away: Empty your heart of its mortal dream. The winds awaken, the

All the heavy days are over; Leave the body’s coloured pride Underneath the grass and clover, With the feet laid side by side. Bathed in flaming founts of duty She’ll not ask a haughty

These are the clouds about the fallen sun, The majesty that shuts his burning eye: The weak lay hand on what the strong has done, Till that be tumbled that was lifted high And

Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing. Prove that I lie. Such body lovers have, Such exacting breath, That they touch

I The Roaring Tinker if you like, But Mannion is my name, And I beat up the common sort And think it is no shame. The common breeds the common, A lout begets a

I ranted to the knave and fool, But outgrew that school, Would transform the part, Fit audience found, but cannot rule My fanatic heart. I sought my betters: though in each Fine manners, liberal

(For Harry Clifton) I HAVE heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow. Of poets that are always gay, For everybody knows or else should know That if nothing

The heron-billed pale cattle-birds That feed on some foul parasite Of the Moroccan flocks and herds Cross the narrow Straits to light In the rich midnight of the garden trees Till the dawn break

The girl goes dancing there On the leaf-sown, new-mown, smooth Grass plot of the garden; Escaped from bitter youth, Escaped out of her crowd, Or out of her black cloud. Ah, dancer, ah, sweet

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot! A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

Were you but lying cold and dead, And lights were paling out of the West, You would come hither, and bend your head, And I would lay my head on your breast; And you

I, proclaiming that there is Among birds or beasts or men One that is perfect or at peace. Danced on Cruachan’s windy plain, Upon Cro-patrick sang aloud; All that could run or leap or

‘Though logic-choppers rule the town, And every man and maid and boy Has marked a distant object down, An aimless joy is a pure joy,’ Or so did Tom O’Roughley say That saw the

Though nurtured like the sailing moon In beauty’s murderous brood, She walked awhile and blushed awhile And on my pathway stood Until I thought her body bore A heart of flesh and blood. But

Dear fellow-artist, why so free With every sort of company, With every Jack and Jill? Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest Soon topples down the hill. You

Pour wine and dance if manhood still have pride, Bring roses if the rose be yet in bloom; The cataract smokes upon the mountain side, Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb. Pull down

On Cruachan’s plain slept he That must sing in a rhyme What most could shake his soul: ‘The stallion Eternity Mounted the mare of Time, ‘Gat the foal of the world.’

For certain minutes at the least That crafty demon and that loud beast That plague me day and night Ran out of my sight; Though I had long perned in the gyre, Between my

I am worn out with dreams; A weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams; And all day long I look Upon this lady’s beauty As though I had found in a book A pictured beauty,

His chosen comrades thought at school He must grow a famous man; He thought the same and lived by rule, All his twenties crammed with toil; ‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘What then?’ Everything

O thought, fly to her when the end of day Awakens an old memory, and say, ‘Your strength, that is so lofty and fierce and kind, It might call up a new age, calling

I Many ingenious lovely things are gone That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, Protected from the circle of the moon That pitches common things about. There stood Amid the ornamental bronze and stone

I lived among great houses, Riches drove out rank, Base drove out the better blood, And mind and body shrank. No Oscar ruled the table, But I’d a troop of friends That knowing better

A man that had six mortal wounds, a man Violent and famous, strode among the dead; Eyes stared out of the branches and were gone. Then certain Shrouds that muttered head to head Came

S. Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind, With a heavy heart and a wandering mind, Have known three centuries, poets sing, Of dalliance with a demon thing. Oisin. Sad to remember,

‘Call down the hawk from the air; Let him be hooded or caged Till the yellow eye has grown mild, For larder and spit are bare, The old cook enraged, The scullion gone wild.’

‘Lay me in a cushioned chair; Carry me, ye four, With cushions here and cushions there, To see the world once more. ‘To stable and to kennel go; Bring what is there to bring;

I sing what was lost and dread what was won, I walk in a battle fought over again, My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men; Feet to the Rising and Setting

On thrones from China to Peru All sorts of kings have sat That men and women of all sorts Proclaimed both good and great; And what’s the odds if such as these For reason

‘O words are lightly spoken,’ Said Pearse to Connolly, ‘Maybe a breath of politic words Has withered our Rose Tree; Or maybe but a wind that blows Across the bitter sea.’ ‘It needs to

An incident from the ‘Historia mei Temporis’ Of the Abbe Michel de Bourdeille Said lady once to lover, ‘None can rely upon A love that lacks its proper food; And if your love were

(From Oedipus at Colonus) Chorus. Come praise Colonus’ horses, and come praise The wine-dark of the wood’s intricacies, The nightingale that deafens daylight there, If daylight ever visit where, Unvisited by tempest or by

My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, Upon the breathless starlit air, “Upon the star that marks the hidden

I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under

Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke, High as the Saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide; And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance

I A bloody and a sudden end, Gunshot or a noose, For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose. He might have had my sister, My cousins by the

Hic. On the grey sand beside the shallow stream Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still A lamp burns on beside the open book That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon, And,

A crazy man that found a cup, When all but dead of thirst, Hardly dared to wet his mouth Imagining, moon-accursed, That another mouthful And his beating heart would burst. October last I found

Poets with whom I learned my trade. Companions of the Cheshire Cheese, Here’s an old story I’ve remade, Imagining ‘twould better please Your cars than stories now in fashion, Though you may think I

Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain. Even from that delight memory