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Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen

NY ingenious lovely things are

That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,protected from the circle of the

That pitches common things about.  There

Amid the ornamental bronze and

An ancient image made of olive wood —And gone are phidias' famous

And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.

We too had many pretty toys when young:

A law indifferent to blame or praise,

To bribe or threat; habits that made old

Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;

Public opinion ripening for so

We thought it would outlive all future days.

O what fine thought we had because we

That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,

And a great army but a showy thing;

What matter that no cannon had been

Into a ploughshare?

Parliament and

Thought that unless a little powder

The trumpeters might burst with

And yet it lack all glory; and

The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.

Now days are dragon-ridden, the

Rides upon sleep:  a drunken

Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,

To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;

The night can sweat with terror as

We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,

And planned to bring the world under a rule,

Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

He who can read the signs nor sink

Into the half-deceit of some

From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand,

Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were

On master-work of intellect or hand,

No honour leave its mighty monument,

Has but one comfort left:  all triumph

But break upon his ghostly solitude.

But is there any comfort to be found?

Man is in love and loves what vanishes,

What more is there to say?

That country

None dared admit, if Such a thought were his,

Incendiary or bigot could be

To burn that stump on the Acropolis,

Or break in bits the famous

Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.

When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwoundA shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth,

It seemed that a dragon of

Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them

Or hurried them off on its own furious path;

So the platonic

Whirls out new right and wrong,

Whirls in the old instead;

All men are dancers and their

Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.

Some moralist or mythological

Compares the solitary soul to a swan;

I am satisfied with that,

Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,

Before that brief gleam of its life be gone,

An image of its state;

The wings half spread for flight,

The breast thrust out in

Whether to play, or to

Those winds that clamour of approaching night.

A man in his own secret

Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has

In art or politics;

Some platonist affirms that in the

Where we should cast off body and

The ancient habit sticks,

And that if our works

But vanish with our

That were a lucky death,

For triumph can but mar our solitude.

The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:

That image can bring wildness, bring a

To end all things, to

What my laborious life imagined,

The half-imagined, the half-written page;

O but we dreamed to

Whatever mischief

To afflict mankind, but

That winds of winter

Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

We, who seven yeats

Talked of honour and of truth,

Shriek with pleasure if we

The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth.

Come let us mock at the

That had such burdens on the

And toiled so hard and

To leave some monument behind,

Nor thought of the levelling wind.

Come let us mock at the wise;

With all those calendars

They fixed old aching eyes,

They never saw how seasons run,

And now but gape at the sun.

Come let us mock at the

That fancied goodness might be gay,

And sick of

Might proclaim a holiday:

Wind shrieked — and where are they?

Mock mockers after

That would not lift a hand

To help good, wise or

To bar that foul storm out, for

Traffic in mockery.

Violence upon the roads:  violence of horses;

Some few have handsome riders, are

On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane,

But wearied running round and round in their

All break and vanish, and evil gathers head:

Herodias' daughters have returned again,

A sudden blast of dusty wind and

Thunder of feet, tumult of images,

Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind;

And should some crazy hand dare touch a

All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries,

According to the wind, for all are blind.

But now wind drops, dust settles;

There lurches past, his great eyes without

Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks,

That insolent fiend Robert

To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler

Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.

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William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats[a] (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar …

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