by W.B. Yeats
HE stood among a crowd at Dromahair;
His heart hung all upon a silken dress,
And he had known at last some tenderness,
Before earth took him to her stony
care;
But when a man poured fish into a pile,
It Seemed they raised their little
silver heads,
And sang what gold morning or evening
sheds
Upon a woven world-forgotten isle
Where people love beside the ravelled
seas;
That Time can never mar a lover's vows
Under that woven changeless roof of
boughs:
The singing shook him out of his new
ease.
He wandered by the sands of Lissadell;
His mind ran all on money cares and
fears,
And he had known at last some prudent
years
Before they heaped his grave under
the hill;
But while he passed before a plashy
place,
A lug-worm with its grey and muddy
mouth
Sang that somewhere to north or west
or south
There dwelt a gay, exulting, gentle
race
Under the golden or the silver skies;
That if a dancer stayed his hungry
foot
It seemed the sun and moon were in
the fruit:
And at that singing he was no more
wise.
He mused beside the well of Scanavin,
He mused upon his mockers: without
fail
His sudden vengeance were a country
tale,
When earthy night had drunk his body
in;
But one small knot-grass growing by
the pool
Sang where - unnecessary cruel voice
-
Old silence bids its chosen race rejoice,
Whatever ravelled waters rise and fall
Or stormy silver fret the gold of day,
And midnight there enfold them like
a fleece
And lover there by lover be at peace.
The tale drove his fine angry mood
away.
He slept under the hill of Lugnagall;
And might have known at last unhaunted
sleep
Under that cold and vapour-turbaned
steep,
Now that the earth had taken man and
all:
Did not the worms that spired about
his bones
proclaim with that unwearied, reedy
cry
That God has laid His fingers on the
sky,
That from those fingers glittering
summer runs
Upon the dancer by the dreamless wave.
Why should those lovers that no lovers
miss
Dream, until God burn Nature with a
kiss?
The man has found no comfort in the
grave.