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    Responsibilities and other poems
    Responsibilities and other poems
    Responsibilities and other poems
    Ebook167 pages1 hour

    Responsibilities and other poems

    By W. B. (William Butler) Yeats and T. Sturge (Thomas Sturge) Moore

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    Responsibilities and other poems

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      Book preview

      Responsibilities and other poems - W. B. (William Butler) Yeats

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Responsibilities, by William Butler Yeats

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: Responsibilities

      and other poems

      Author: William Butler Yeats

      Illustrator: Thomas Sturge Moore

      Release Date: July 27, 2011 [EBook #36865]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RESPONSIBILITIES ***

      Produced by Meredith Bach, David Garcia and the Online

      Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This

      file was produced from images generously made available

      by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

      RESPONSIBILITIES

      AND OTHER POEMS

      THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

      NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS

      ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

      MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

      LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA

      MELBOURNE

      THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

      TORONTO

      RESPONSIBILITIES

      AND OTHER POEMS

      BY

      WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

      New York

      THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

      1916

      All rights reserved

      Copyright, 1911

      By WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

      Copyright, 1904, 1908, and 1912

      By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

      Copyright, 1916

      By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

      Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1916.

      CONTENTS

      'In dreams begins responsibility.'

      Old Play.

      'How am I fallen from myself, for a long time now

      I have not seen the Prince of Chang in my dreams.'

      Khoung-fou-tseu.

      RESPONSIBILITIES

      Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain

      Somewhere in ear-shot for the story's end,

      Old Dublin merchant 'free of ten and four'

      Or trading out of Galway into Spain;

      And country scholar, Robert Emmet's friend,

      A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;

      Traders or soldiers who have left me blood

      That has not passed through any huxter's loin,

      Pardon, and you that did not weigh the cost,

      Old Butlers when you took to horse and stood

      Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne

      Till your bad master blenched and all was lost;

      You merchant skipper that leaped overboard

      After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay,

      You most of all, silent and fierce old man

      Because you were the spectacle that stirred

      My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say

      'Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun';

      Pardon that for a barren passion's sake,

      Although I have come close on forty-nine

      I have no child, I have nothing but a book,

      Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine.

      January 1914.

      THE GREY ROCK

      Poets with whom I learned my trade,

      Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,

      Here's an old story I've re-made,

      Imagining 'twould better please

      Your ears than stories now in fashion,

      Though you may think I waste my breath

      Pretending that there can be passion

      That has more life in it than death,

      And though at bottling of your wine

      The bow-legged Goban had no say;

      The moral's yours because it's mine.

      When cups went round at close of day—

      Is not that how good stories run?—

      Somewhere within some hollow hill,

      If books speak truth in Slievenamon,

      But let that be, the gods were still

      And sleepy, having had their meal,

      And smoky torches made a glare

      On painted pillars, on a deal

      Of fiddles and of flutes hung there

      By the ancient holy hands that brought them

      From murmuring Murias, on cups—

      Old Goban hammered them and wrought them,

      And put his pattern round their tops

      To hold the wine they buy of him.

      But from the juice that made them wise

      All those had lifted up the dim

      Imaginations of their eyes,

      For one that was like woman made

      Before their sleepy eyelids ran

      And trembling with her passion said,

      'Come out and dig for a dead man,

      Who's burrowing somewhere in the ground,

      And mock him to his face and then

      Hollo him on with horse and hound,

      For he is the worst of all dead men.'

      We should be dazed and terror struck,

      If we but saw in dreams that room,

      Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck

      That emptied all our days to come.

      I knew a woman none could please,

      Because she dreamed when but a child

      Of men and women made like these;

      And after, when her blood ran wild,

      Had ravelled her own story out,

      And said, 'In two or in three years

      I need must marry some poor lout,'

      And having said it burst in tears.

      Since, tavern comrades, you have died,

      Maybe your images have stood,

      Mere bone and muscle

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