W. B. Yeats

W. B. Yeats [The Yeats Society]

my favorite bits from W. B. Yeats's "The Tower":

                                  — this caricature,

Decrepit age that has been tied to me

As to a dog’s tail . . .

Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth . . .

A serving-man, that could divine

That most respected lady’s every wish,

Ran and with the garden shears

Clipped an insolent farmer’s ears

And brought them in a little covered dish. . . .

He stumbled, tumbled, fumbled to and fro

And had but broken knees for hire

And horrible splendour of desire . . .

their great wooden dice beat on the board . . .

Come old, necessitous, half-mounted man;

And bring beauty’s blind rambling celebrant . . .

the labyrinth of another’s being . . .

Pride, like that of the morn,

When the headlong light is loose,

Or that of the fabulous horn,

Or that of the sudden shower

When all streams are dry,

Or that of the hour

When the swan must fix his eye

Upon a fading gleam,

Float out upon a long

Last reach of glittering stream

And there sing his last song. . . .

As at the loophole there

The daws chatter and scream,

And drop twigs layer upon layer.

When they have mounted up,

The mother bird will rest

On their hollow top,

And so warm her wild nest. . . .

Till the wreck of body,

Slow decay of blood,

Testy delirium

Or dull decrepitude,

Or what worse evil come —

The death of friends, or death

Of every brilliant eye

That made a catch in the breath —

Seem but the clouds of the sky

When the horizon fades;

Or a bird’s sleepy cry

Among the deepening shades.