In the Seven Woods E-Book

William Butler Yeats

• Herausgeber: E-BOOKARAMA
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

"In the Seven Woods", masterpiece written in 1903, is Yeats's first twentieth-century poetry collection. Its fourteen poems show him moving steadily away from the decisively Romantic diction of his earlier work. Here we hear a poetic voice that is at once more individual, colloquial and dramatic than previously. In addition, several poems sound a note of bitter lamentation over the marriage in 1903 of Maud Gonne, Yeats's great love and muse, to John MacBride. 

Leseprobe

Table of contents

IN THE SEVEN WOODS

In The Seven Woods

The Old Age Of Queen Maeve

Baile And Aillinn

The Arrow

The Folly Of Being Comforted

The Withering Of The Boughs

Adam's Curse

The Song Of Red Hanrahan

The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water

Under The Moon

The Players Ask For A Blessing On The Psalteries And Themselves

The Rider From The North

Comment By Yeats

On Baile's Strand: A Play

IN THE SEVEN WOODS

William Butler Yeats

In The Seven Woods

I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees Hum in the lime tree flowers; and put away The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile Tara uprooted, and new commonness Upon the throne and crying about the streets And hanging its paper flowers from post to post, Because it is alone of all things happy. I am contented for I know that Quiet Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer, Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs A cloudy quiver over Parc-na-Lee.

August, 1902.

The Old Age Of Queen Maeve

Maeve the great queen was pacing to and fro, Between the walls covered with beaten bronze, In her high house at Cruachan; the long hearth, Flickering with ash and hazel, but half showed Where the tired horse-boys lay upon the rushes, Or on the benches underneath the walls, In comfortable sleep; all living slept But that great queen, who more than half the night Had paced from door to fire and fire to door. Though now in her old age, in her young age She had been beautiful in that old way That's all but gone; for the proud heart is gone And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all But soft beauty and indolent desire. She could have called over the rim of the world Whatever woman's lover had hit her fancy, And yet had been great bodied and great limbed, Fashioned to be the mother of strong children; And she'd had lucky eyes and a high heart, And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax, At need, and made her beautiful and fierce, Sudden and laughing. O unquiet heart, Why do you praise another, praising her, As if there were no tale but your own tale Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound? Have I not bid you tell of that great queen Who has been buried some two thousand years?

When night was at its deepest, a wild goose Cried from the porter's lodge, and with long clamour Shook the ale horns and shields upon their hooks; But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power Had filled the house with Druid heaviness; And wondering who of the many changing Sidhe Had come as in the old times to counsel her., Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall being old, To that small chamber by the outer gate. The porter slept although he sat upright With still and stony limbs and open eyes. Maeve waited, and when that ear-piercing noise Broke from his parted lips and broke again, She laid a hand on either of his shoulders, And shook him wide awake, and bid him say Who of the wandering many-changing ones Had troubled his sleep. But all he had to say Was that, the air being heavy and the dogs More still than they had been for a good month, He had fallen asleep, and, though he had dreamed nothing, He could remember when he had had fine dreams. It was before the time of the great war Over the White-Horned Bull, and the Brown Bull.

She turned away; he turned again to sleep That no god troubled now, and, wondering What matters were afoot among the Sidhe, Maeve walked through that great hall, and with a sigh Lifted the curtain of her sleeping room, Remembering that she too had seemed divine To many thousand eyes, and to her own One that the generations had long-waited That work too difficult for mortal hands Might be accomplished. Bunching the curtain up She saw her husband Ailell sleeping there, And thought of days when he'd had a straight body, And of that famous Fergus, Nessa's husband, Who had been the lover of her middle life.

Suddenly Ailell spoke out of his sleep, And not with his own voice or a man's voice, But with the burning, live, unshaken voice Of those that it may be can never age. He said, 'High Queen of Cruachan and Mag Ai A king of the Great Plain would speak with you.' And with glad voice Maeve answered him, 'What King Of the far wandering shadows has come to me? As in the old days when they would come and go About my threshold to counsel and to help.' The parted lips replied, 'I seek your help, For I am Aengus and I am crossed in love.' 'How may a mortal whose life gutters out Help them that wander with hand clasping hand By rivers where nor rain nor hail has dimmed Their haughty images, that cannot fade Although their beauty's like a hollow dream.'