Michael Robartes and the Dancer

by William Butler Yeats

Portrait sketch of William Butler Yeats in 1908
by John Singer Sargeant. Click for a larger image.

Cuala Press (1921)

edited for the Web by
John Mark Ockerbloom,
February 16th, 1998

Michael Robartes and the Dancer

He. Opinion is not worth a rush;

In this altar-piece the knight,

Who grips his long spear so to push

That dragon through the fading light,

Loved the lady; and it's plain

The half-dead dragon was her thought,

That every morning rose again

And dug its claws and shrieked and fought.

Could the impossible come to pass

She would have time to turn her eyes,

Her lover thought, upon the glass

And on the instant would grow wise.

She. You mean they argued.

He.                                      Put it so;

But bear in mind your lover's wage

Is what your looking-glass can show,

And that he will turn green with rage

At all that is not pictured there.

She. May I not put myself to college?

He. Go pluck Athena by the hair;

For what mere book can grant a knowledge

With an impassioned gravity

Appropriate to that beating breast,

That vigorous thigh, that dreaming eye?

And may the devil take the rest.

She. And must no beautiful woman be

Learned like a man?

He.                          Paul Veronese

And all his sacred company

Imagined bodies all their days

By the lagoon you love so much,

For proud, soft, ceremonious proof

That all must come to sight and touch;

While Michael Angelo's Sistine roof

His 'Morning' and his 'Night' disclose

How sinew that has been pulled tight,

Or it may be loosened in repose,

Can rule by supernatural right

Yet be but sinew.

She.                    I have heard said

There is great danger in the body.

He. Did God in portioning wine and bread

Give man His thought or His mere body?

She. My wretched dragon is perplexed.

He. I have principles to prove me right.

It follows from this Latin text

That blest souls are not composite,

And that all beautiful women may

Live in uncomposite blessedness,

And lead us to the like -- if they

Will banish every thought, unless

The lineaments that please their view

When the long looking-glass is full,

Even from the foot-sole think it too.

She. They say such different things at school.

William Butler Yeats

Solomon and the Witch

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 his, not mine.'

                             And he that knew

All sounds by bird or angel sung

Answered: 'A crested cockerel crew

Upon a blossoming apple bough

Three hundred years before the Fall,

And never crew again till now,

And would not now but that he thought,

Chance being at one with Choice at last,

All that the brigand apple brought

And this foul world were dead at last.

He that crowed out eternity

Thought to have crowed it in again.

A lover with a spider's eye

Will find out some appropriate pain,

Aye, though all passion's in the glance,

For every nerve: lover tests lover

With cruelties of Choice and Chance;

And when at last that murder's over

Maybe the bride-bed brings despair

For each an imagined image brings

And finds a real image there;

Yet the world ends when these two things,

Though several, are a single light,

When oil and wick are burned in one;

Therefore a blessed moon last night

Gave Sheba to her Solomon.'

'Yet the world stays':

                                  'If that be so,

Your cockerel found us in the wrong

Although he thought it worth a crow.

Maybe an image is too strong

Or maybe is not strong enough.'

'The night has fallen; not a sound

In the forbidden sacred grove

Unless a petal hit the ground,

Nor any human sight within it

But the crushed grass where we have lain;

And the moon is wilder every minute.

Oh, Solomon! let us try again.'

William Butler Yeats

An Image from a Past Life

He. Never until this night have I been stirred.

The elaborate star-light has thrown reflections

On the dark stream,

Till all the eddies gleam;

And thereupon there comes that scream

From terrified, invisible beast or bird:

Image of poignant recollection.

She. An image of my heart that is smitten through

Out of all likelihood, or reason,

And when at last,

Youth's bitterness being past,

I had thought that all my days were cast

Amid most lovely places; smitten as though

It had not learned its lesson.

He. Why have you laid your hands upon my eyes?

What can have suddenly alarmed you

Whereon 'twere best

My eyes should never rest?

What is there but the slowly fading west,

The river imaging the flashing skies,

All that to this moment charmed you?

She. A sweetheart from another life floats there

As though she had been forced to linger

From vague distress

Or arrogant loveliness,

Merely to loosen out a tress

Among the starry eddies of her hair

Upon the paleness of a finger.

He. But why should you grow suddenly afraid

And start -- I at your shoulder --

Imagining

That any night could bring

An image up, or anything

Even to eyes that beauty had driven mad,

But images to make me fonder.

She. Now she has thrown her arms above her head;

Whether she threw them up to flout me,

Or but to find,

Now that no fingers bind,

That her hair streams upon the wind,

I do not know, that know I am afraid

Of the hovering thing night brought me.

William Butler Yeats

Under Saturn

DO not because this day I have grown saturnine

Imagine that some lost love, unassailable

Being a portion of my youth, can make me pine

And so forget the comfort that no words can tell

Your coming brought; though I acknowledge that I have gone

On a fantastic ride, my horse's flanks were spurred

By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen,

And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard,

And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died

Before my time, seem like a vivid memory.

You heard that labouring man who had served my people. He said

Upon the open road, near to the Sligo quay --

No, no, not said, but cried it out -- 'You have come again

And surely after twenty years it was time to come.'

I am thinking of a child's vow sworn in vain

Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home.

     November 1919

William Butler Yeats

Easter, 1916

I HAVE met them at close of day

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head

Or polite meaningless words,

Or have lingered awhile and said

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done

Of a mocking tale or a gibe

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,

Being certain that they and I

But lived where motley is worn:

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent

In ignorant good will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers

When young and beautiful,

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school

And rode our winged horse.

This other his helper and friend

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,

So sensitive his nature seemed,

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vain-glorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone

Through summer and winter seem

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road.

The rider, the birds that range

From cloud to tumbling cloud,

Minute by minute change;

A shadow of cloud on the stream

Changes minute by minute;

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,

And a horse plashes within it

Where long-legged moor-hens dive,

And hens to moor-cocks call.

Minute by minute they live:

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?

That is heaven's part, our part

To murmur name upon name,

As a mother names her child

When sleep at last has come

On limbs that had run wild.

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith

For all that is done and said.

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead.

And what if excess of love

Bewildered them till they died?

I write it out in a verse --

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

      September 25, 1916

William Butler Yeats

Sixteen Dead Men

O BUT we talked at large before

The sixteen men were shot,

But who can talk of give and take,

What should be and what not?

While those dead men are loitering there

To stir the boiling pot.

You say that we should still the land

Till Germany's overcome;

But who is there to argue that

Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?

And is their logic to outweigh

MacDonagh's bony thumb?

How could you dream they'd listen

That have an ear alone

For those new comrades they have found

Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,

Or meddle with our give and take

That converse bone to bone.

William Butler Yeats

The Rose Tree

'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 be but watered,'

James Connolly replied,

'To make the green come out again

And spread on every side,

And shake the blossom from the bud

To be the garden's pride.'

'But where can we draw water'

Said Pearse to Connolly,

'When all the wells are parched away?

O plain as plain can be

There's nothing but our own red blood

Can make a right Rose Tree.'

William Butler Yeats

On a Political Prisoner

SHE that but little patience knew,

From childhood on, had now so much

A grey gull lost its fear and flew

Down to her cell and there alit,

And there endured her fingers touch

And from her fingers ate its bit.

Did she in touching that lone wing

Recall the years before her mind

Became a bitter, an abstract thing,

Her thought some popular enmity:

Blind and leader of the blind

Drinking the foul ditch where they lie?

When long ago I saw her ride

Under Ben Bulban to the meet,

The beauty of her country-side

With all youth's lonely wildness stirred,

She seemed to have grown clean and sweet

Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird:

Sea-borne, or balanced on the air

When first it sprang out of the nest

Upon some lofty rock to stare

Upon the cloudy canopy,

While under its storm-beaten breast

Cried out the hollows of the sea.

William Butler Yeats

The Leaders of the Crowd

THEY must to keep their certainty accuse

All that are different of a base intent;

Pull down established honour; hawk for news

Whatever their loose phantasy invent

And murmur it with bated breath, as though

The abounding gutter had been Helicon

Or calumny a song. How can they know

Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone,

And there alone, that have no solitude?

So the crowd come they care not what may come.

They have loud music, hope every day renewed

And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.

William Butler Yeats

Towards Break of Day

Was it the double of my dream

The woman that by me lay

Dreamed, or did we halve a dream

Under the first cold gleam of day?

I thought 'there is a waterfall

Upon Ben Bulban side,

That all my childhood counted dear;

Were I to travel far and wide

I could not find a thing so dear.'

My memories had magnified

So many times childish delight.

I would have touched it like a child

But knew my finger could but have touched

Cold stone and water. I grew wild

Even accusing heaven because

It had set down among its laws:

Nothing that we love over-much

Is ponderable to our touch.

I dreamed towards break of day,

The cold blown spray in my nostril.

But she that beside me lay

Had watched in bitterer sleep

The marvellous stag of Arthur,

That lofty white stag, leap

From mountain steep to steep.

William Butler Yeats

Demon and Beast

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 pernned in the gyre,

Between my hatred and desire,

I saw my freedom won

And all laugh in the sun.

The glittering eyes in a death's head

Of old Luke Wadding's portrait said

Welcome, and the Ormonds all

Nodded upon the wall,

And even Stafford smiled as though

It made him happier to know

I understood his plan;

Now that the loud beast ran

There was no portrait in the Gallery

But beckoned to sweet company,

For all men's thoughts grew clear

Being dear as mine are dear.

But soon a tear-drop started up

For aimless joy had made me stop

Beside the little lake

To watch a white gull take

A bit of bread thrown up into the air;

Now gyring down and pernning there

He splashed where an absurd

Portly green-pated bird

Shook off the water from his back;

Being no more demoniac

A stupid happy creature

Could rouse my whole nature.

Yet I am certain as can be

That every natural victory

Belongs to beast or demon,

That never yet had freeman

Right mastery of natural things,

And that mere growing old, that brings

Chilled blood, this sweetness brought;

Yet have no dearer thought

Than that I may find out a way

To make it linger half a day.

O what a sweetness strayed

Through barren Thebaid,

Or by the Mareotic sea

When that exultant Anthony

And twice a thousand more

Starved upon the shore

And withered to a bag of bones:

What had the Caesars but their thrones?

William Butler Yeats

The Second Coming

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

A Prayer for My Daughter

ONCE more the storm is howling and half hid

Under this cradle-hood and coverlid

My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle

But Gregory's Wood and one bare hill

Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind,

Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;

And for an hour I have walked and prayed

Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour

And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,

And under the arches of the bridge, and scream

In the elms above the flooded stream;

Imagining in excited reverie

That the future years had come,

Dancing to a frenzied drum,

Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not

Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,

Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,

Being made beautiful overmuch,

Consider beauty a sufficient end,

Lose natural kindness and maybe

The heart-revealing intimacy

That chooses right and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull

And later had much trouble from a fool,

While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,

Being fatherless could have her way

Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man.

It's certain that fine women eat

A crazy salad with their meat

Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;

Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned

By those that are not entirely beautiful;

Yet many, that have played the fool

For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,

And many a poor man that has roved,

Loved and thought himself beloved,

From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree

That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,

And have no business but dispensing round

Their magnanimities of sound,

Nor but in merriment begin a chase,

Nor but in merriment a quarrel.

Oh, may she live like some green laurel

Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,

The sort of beauty that I have approved,

Prosper but little, has dried up of late,

Yet knows that to be choked with hate

May well be of all evil chances chief.

If there's no hatred in a mind

Assault and battery of the wind

Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,

So let her think opinions are accursed.

Have I not seen the loveliest woman born

Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,

Because of her opinionated mind

Barter that horn and every good

By quiet natures understood

For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,

The soul recovers radical innocence

And learns at last that it is self-delighting,

Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,

And that its own sweet will is heaven's will;

She can, though every face should scowl

And every windy quarter howl

Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bride-groom bring her to a house

Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;

For arrogance and hatred are the wares

Peddled in the thoroughfares.

How but in custom and in ceremony

Are innocence and beauty born?

Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,

And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

        June 1919

William Butler Yeats

A Meditation in Time of War

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 fantasy.

William Butler Yeats

To be Carved on a Stone at Ballylee

I, THE poet William Yeats,

With old mill boards and sea-green slates,

And smithy work from the Gort forge,

Restored this tower for my wife George;

And may these characters remain

When all is ruin once again.

William Butler Yeats

This electronic edition was prepared by John Mark Ockerbloom and released February 16, 1998. Corrections may be sent to spok+books@cs.cmu.edu.

This edition uses the text of the 1921 Cuala Press edition of Michael Robartes and the Dancer by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), as given in Allt and Alspach's Varorium Edition. Only the poems are given here; there are no notes, title pages, or other supplementary material in this electronic edition.

Because Yeats revised his poems after their 1921 publication, these poems may be somewhat different from the versions found in most modern anthologies.

The preparer of this edition believes the text to be in the public domain in the United States of America, but notes that it may still be copyrighted in some other countries. Consult local copyright laws before using or storing this text outside the USA.