Responsibilities, and other poems

You gave but will not give again

Until enough of Paudeen's pence

By Biddy's halfpennies have lain

To be 'some sort of evidence,'

Before you'll put your guineas down,

That things it were a pride to give

Are what the blind and ignorant town

Imagines best to make it thrive.

What cared Duke Ercole, that bid

His mummers to the market place,

What th' onion-sellers thought or did

So that his Plautus set the pace

For the Italian comedies?

And Guidobaldo, when he made

That grammar school of courtesies

Where wit and beauty learned their trade

Upon Urbino's windy hill,

Had sent no runners to and fro

That he might learn the shepherds' will.

And when they drove out Cosimo,

Indifferent how the rancour ran,

He gave the hours they had set free

To Michelozzo's latest plan

For the San Marco Library,

Whence turbulent Italy should draw

Delight in Art whose end is peace,

In logic and in natural law

By sucking at the dugs of Greece.

Your open hand but shows our loss,

For he knew better how to live.

Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss,

Look up in the sun's eye and give

What the exultant heart calls good

That some new day may breed the best

Because you gave, not what they would

But the right twigs for an eagle's nest!

What need you, being come to sense,

But fumble in a greasy till

And add the halfpence to the pence

And prayer to shivering prayer, until

You have dried the marrow from the bone;

For men were born to pray and save:

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,

It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind

The names that stilled your childish play,

They have gone about the world like wind,

But little time had they to pray

For whom the hangman's rope was spun,

And what, God help us, could they save:

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,

It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread

The grey wing upon every tide;

For this that all that blood was shed,

For this Edward Fitzgerald died,

And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,

All that delirium of the brave;

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,

It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,

And call those exiles as they were,

In all their loneliness and pain

You'd cry 'some woman's yellow hair

Has maddened every mother's son':

They weighed so lightly what they gave,

But let them be, they're dead and gone,

They're with O'Leary in the grave.

Now all the truth is out,

Be secret and take defeat

From any brazen throat,

For how can you compete,

Being honour bred, with one

Who, were it proved he lies,

Were neither shamed in his own

Nor in his neighbours' eyes?

Bred to a harder thing

Than Triumph, turn away

And like a laughing string

Whereon mad fingers play

Amid a place of stone,

Be secret and exult,

Because of all things known

That is most difficult.

Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite

Of our old Paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind

Among the stones and thorn trees, under morning light;

Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind

A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought

That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,

There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,

A single soul that lacks a sweet crystaline cry.

If you have revisited the town, thin Shade,

Whether to look upon your monument

(I wonder if the builder has been paid)

Or happier thoughted when the day is spent

To drink of that salt breath out of the sea

When grey gulls flit about instead of men,

And the gaunt houses put on majesty:

Let these content you and be gone again;

For they are at their old tricks yet.

A man

Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought

In his full hands what, had they only known,

Had given their children's children loftier thought,

Sweeter emotion, working in their veins

Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,

And insult heaped upon him for his pains

And for his open-handedness, disgrace;

An old foul mouth that slandered you had set

The pack upon him.

Go, unquiet wanderer,

And gather the Glasnevin coverlet

About your head till the dust stops your ear,

The time for you to taste of that salt breath

And listen at the corners has not come;

You had enough of sorrow before death—

Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.

We have cried in our despair

That men desert,

For some trivial affair

Or noisy, insolent sport,

Beauty that we have won

From bitterest hours;

Yet we, had we walked within

Those topless towers

Where Helen walked with her boy,

Had given but as the rest

Of the men and women of Troy,

A word and a jest.

Once, when midnight smote the air,

Eunuchs ran through Hell and met

From thoroughfare to thoroughfare,

While that great Juan galloped by;

And like these to rail and sweat

Staring upon his sinewy thigh.

'Though to my feathers in the wet,

I have stood here from break of day,

I have not found a thing to eat

For only rubbish comes my way.

Am I to live on lebeen-lone?'

Muttered the old crane of Gort.

'For all my pains on lebeen-lone.'

King Guari walked amid his court

The palace-yard and river-side

And there to three old beggars said:

'You that have wandered far and wide

Can ravel out what's in my head.

Do men who least desire get most,

Or get the most who most desire?'

A beggar said: 'They get the most

Whom man or devil cannot tire,

And what could make their muscles taut

Unless desire had made them so.'

But Guari laughed with secret thought,

'If that be true as it seems true,

One of you three is a rich man,

For he shall have a thousand pounds

Who is first asleep, if but he can

Sleep before the third noon sounds.'

And thereon merry as a bird,

With his old thoughts King Guari went

From river-side and palace-yard

And left them to their argument.

'And if I win,' one beggar said,

'Though I am old I shall persuade

A pretty girl to share my bed';

The second: 'I shall learn a trade';

The third: 'I'll hurry to the course

Among the other gentlemen,

And lay it all upon a horse';

The second: 'I have thought again:

A farmer has more dignity.'

One to another sighed and cried:

The exorbitant dreams of beggary,

That idleness had borne to pride,

Sang through their teeth from noon to noon;

And when the second twilight brought

The frenzy of the beggars' moon

They closed their blood-shot eyes for naught.

One beggar cried: 'You're shamming sleep.'

And thereupon their anger grew

Till they were whirling in a heap.

They'd mauled and bitten the night through

Or sat upon their heels to rail,

And when old Guari came and stood

Before the three to end this tale,

They were commingling lice and blood.

'Time's up,' he cried, and all the three

With blood-shot eyes upon him stared.

'Time's up,' he cried, and all the three

Fell down upon the dust and snored.

'Maybe I shall be lucky yet,

Now they are silent,' said the crane.

'Though to my feathers in the wet

I've stood as I were made of stone

And seen the rubbish run about,

It's certain there are trout somewhere

And maybe I shall take a trout

If but I do not seem to care.'

Three old hermits took the air

By a cold and desolate sea,

First was muttering a prayer,

Second rummaged for a flea;

On a windy stone, the third,

Giddy with his hundredth year,

Sang unnoticed like a bird.

'Though the Door of Death is near

And what waits behind the door,

Three times in a single day

I, though upright on the shore,

Fall asleep when I should pray.'

So the first but now the second,

'We're but given what we have earned

When all thoughts and deeds are reckoned,

So it's plain to be discerned

That the shades of holy men,

Who have failed being weak of will,

Pass the Door of Birth again,

And are plagued by crowds, until

They've the passion to escape.'

Moaned the other, 'They are thrown

Into some most fearful shape.'

But the second mocked his moan:

'They are not changed to anything,

Having loved God once, but maybe,

To a poet or a king

Or a witty lovely lady.'

While he'd rummaged rags and hair,

Caught and cracked his flea, the third,

Giddy with his hundredth year

Sang unnoticed like a bird.

'Time to put off the world and go somewhere

And find my health again in the sea air,'

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,

'And make my soul before my pate is bare.'

'And get a comfortable wife and house

To rid me of the devil in my shoes,'

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,

'And the worse devil that is between my thighs.'

'And though I'd marry with a comely lass,

She need not be too comely—let it pass,'

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,

'But there's a devil in a looking-glass.'

'Nor should she be too rich, because the rich

Are driven by wealth as beggars by the itch,'

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,

'And cannot have a humorous happy speech.'

'And there I'll grow respected at my ease,

And hear amid the garden's nightly peace,'

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,

'The wind-blown clamor of the barnacle-geese.'

'The Man that I praise,'

Cries out the empty well,

'Lives all his days

Where a hand on the bell

Can call the milch-cows

To the comfortable door of his house.

Who but an idiot would praise

Dry stones in a well?'

'The Man that I praise,'

Cries out the leafless tree,

'Has married and stays

By an old hearth, and he

On naught has set store

But children and dogs on the floor.

Who but an idiot would praise

A withered tree?'

As I came over Windy Gap

They threw a halfpenny into my cap,

For I am running to Paradise;

And all that I need do is to wish

And somebody puts his hand in the dish

To throw me a bit of salted fish:

And there the king is but as the beggar.

My brother Mourteen is worn out

With skelping his big brawling lout,

And I am running to Paradise;

A poor life do what he can,

And though he keep a dog and a gun,

A serving maid and a serving man:

And there the king is but as the beggar.

Poor men have grown to be rich men,

And rich men grown to be poor again,

And I am running to Paradise;

And many a darling wit's grown dull

That tossed a bare heel when at school,

Now it has filled an old sock full:

And there the king is but as the beggar.

The wind is old and still at play

While I must hurry upon my way,

For I am running to Paradise;

Yet never have I lit on a friend

To take my fancy like the wind

That nobody can buy or bind:

And there the king is but as the beggar.

A one-legged, one-armed, one-eyed man,

A bundle of rags upon a crutch,

Stumbled on windy Cruachan

Cursing the wind. It was as much

As the one sturdy leg could do

To keep him upright while he cursed.

He had counted, where long years ago

Queen Maeve's nine Maines had been nursed,

A pair of lapwings, one old sheep

And not a house to the plain's edge,

When close to his right hand a heap

Of grey stones and a rocky ledge

Reminded him that he could make,

If he but shifted a few stones,

A shelter till the daylight broke.

But while he fumbled with the stones

They toppled over; 'Were it not

I have a lucky wooden shin

I had been hurt'; and toppling brought

Before his eyes, where stones had been,

A dark deep hole in the rock's face.

He gave a gasp and thought to run,

Being certain it was no right place

But the Hell Mouth at Cruachan

That's stuffed with all that's old and bad,

And yet stood still, because inside

He had seen a red-haired jolly lad

In some outlandish coat beside

A ladle and a tub of beer,

Plainly no phantom by his look.

So with a laugh at his own fear

He crawled into that pleasant nook.

Young Red-head stretched himself to yawn

And murmured, 'May God curse the night

That's grown uneasy near the dawn

So that it seems even I sleep light;

And who are you that wakens me?

Has one of Maeve's nine brawling sons

Grown tired of his own company?

But let him keep his grave for once

I have to find the sleep I have lost.'

And then at last being wide awake,

'I took you for a brawling ghost,

Say what you please, but from day-break

I'll sleep another century.'

The beggar deaf to all but hope

Went down upon a hand and knee

And took the wooden ladle up

And would have dipped it in the beer

But the other pushed his hand aside,

'Before you have dipped it in the beer

That sacred Goban brewed,' he cried,

'I'd have assurance that you are able

To value beer—I will have no fool

Dipping his nose into my ladle

Because he has stumbled on this hole

In the bad hour before the dawn.

If you but drink that beer and say

I will sleep until the winter's gone,

Or maybe, to Midsummer Day

You will sleep that length; and at the first

I waited so for that or this—

Because the weather was a-cursed

Or I had no woman there to kiss,

And slept for half a year or so;

But year by year I found that less

Gave me such pleasure I'd forgo

Even a half hour's nothingness,

And when at one year's end I found

I had not waked a single minute,

I chose this burrow under ground.

I will sleep away all Time within it:

My sleep were now nine centuries

But for those mornings when I find

The lapwing at their foolish cries

And the sheep bleating at the wind

As when I also played the fool.'

The beggar in a rage began

Upon his hunkers in the hole,

'It's plain that you are no right man

To mock at everything I love

As if it were not worth the doing.

I'd have a merry life enough

If a good Easter wind were blowing,

And though the winter wind is bad

I should not be too down in the mouth

For anything you did or said

If but this wind were in the south.'

But the other cried, 'You long for spring

Or that the wind would shift a point

And do not know that you would bring,

If time were suppler in the joint,

Neither the spring nor the south wind

But the hour when you shall pass away

And leave no smoking wick behind,

For all life longs for the Last Day

And there's no man but cocks his ear

To know when Michael's trumpet cries

That flesh and bone may disappear,

And souls as if they were but sighs,

And there be nothing but God left;

But I alone being blessed keep

Like some old rabbit to my cleft

And wait Him in a drunken sleep.'

He dipped his ladle in the tub

And drank and yawned and stretched him out.

The other shouted, 'You would rob

My life of every pleasant thought

And every comfortable thing

And so take that and that.' Thereon

He gave him a great pummelling,

But might have pummelled at a stone

For all the sleeper knew or cared;

And after heaped the stones again

And cursed and prayed, and prayed and cursed:

'Oh God if he got loose!' And then

In fury and in panic fled

From the Hell Mouth at Cruachan

And gave God thanks that overhead

The clouds were brightening with the dawn.

My mother dandled me and sang,

'How young it is, how young!'

And made a golden cradle

That on a willow swung.

'He went away,' my mother sang,

'When I was brought to bed,'

And all the while her needle pulled

The gold and silver thread.

She pulled the thread and bit the thread

And made a golden gown,

And wept because she had dreamt that I

Was born to wear a crown.

'When she was got,' my mother sang,

'I heard a sea-mew cry,

And saw a flake of the yellow foam

That dropped upon my thigh.'

How therefore could she help but braid

The gold into my hair,

And dream that I should carry

The golden top of care?

Hope that you may understand!

What can books of men that wive

In a dragon-guarded land,

Paintings of the dolphin-drawn

Sea-nymphs in their pearly waggons

Do, but awake a hope to live

That had gone

With the dragons?

Toil, and grow rich,

What's that but to lie

With a foul witch

And after, drained dry,

To be brought

To the chamber where

Lies one long sought

With despair.

What's riches to him

That has made a great peacock

With the pride of his eye?

The wind-beaten, stone-grey,

And desolate Three-rock

Would nourish his whim.

Live he or die

Amid wet rocks and heather,

His ghost will be gay

Adding feather to feather

For the pride of his eye.

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 the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet

That there be no foot silent in the room

Nor mouth from kissing, nor from wine unwet;

Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.

In vain, in vain; the cataract still cries

The everlasting taper lights the gloom;

All wisdom shut into his onyx eyes

Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb.

Dance there upon the shore;

What need have you to care

For wind or water's roar?

And tumble out your hair

That the salt drops have wet;

Being young you have not known

The fool's triumph, nor yet

Love lost as soon as won,

Nor the best labourer dead

And all the sheaves to bind.

What need have you to dread

The monstrous crying of wind?

Has no one said those daring

Kind eyes should be more learn'd?

Or warned you how despairing

The moths are when they are burned,

I could have warned you, but you are young,

So we speak a different tongue.

O you will take whatever's offered

And dream that all the world's a friend,

Suffer as your mother suffered,

Be as broken in the end.

But I am old and you are young,

And I speak a barbarous tongue.

The moments passed as at a play,

I had the wisdom love brings forth;

I had my share of mother wit

And yet for all that I could say,

And though I had her praise for it,

A cloud blown from the cut-throat north

Suddenly hid love's moon away.

Believing every word I said

I praised her body and her mind

Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,

And pleasure made her cheeks grow red,

And vanity her footfall light,

Yet we, for all that praise, could find

Nothing but darkness overhead.

We sat as silent as a stone,

We knew, though she'd not said a word,

That even the best of love must die,

And had been savagely undone

Were it not that love upon the cry

Of a most ridiculous little bird

Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.

Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,

And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone,

Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping place,

Babbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone.

The lineaments, a heart that laughter has made sweet,

These, these remain, but I record what's gone. A crowd

Will gather, and not know it walks the very street

Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.

Now must I these three praise—

Three women that have wrought

What joy is in my days;

One that no passing thought,

Nor those unpassing cares,

No, not in these fifteen

Many times troubled years,

Could ever come between

Heart and delighted heart;

And one because her hand

Had strength that could unbind

What none can understand,

What none can have and thrive,

Youth's dreamy load, till she

So changed me that I live

Labouring in ecstasy.

And what of her that took

All till my youth was gone

With scarce a pitying look?

How should I praise that one?

When day begins to break

I count my good and bad,

Being wakeful for her sake,

Remembering what she had,

What eagle look still shows,

While up from my heart's root

So great a sweetness flows

I shake from head to foot.