Poems

By Williams B. Yeats
ADAM'S CURSE

WE sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,

And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, "A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'

And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake

There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low

Replied, "To be born woman is to know --
Although they do not talk of it at school --

That we must labour to be beautiful.'
I said, "It's certain there is no fine thing

Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be

So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell

Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove

To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
IN MEMORY OF ALFRED POLLEXFEN

FIVE-AND-TWENTY years have gone
Since old William pollexfen

Laid his strong bones down in death
By his wife Elizabeth

In the grey stone tomb he made.
And after twenty years they laid

In that tomb by him and her
His son George, the astrologer;

And Masons drove from miles away
To scatter the Acacia spray

Upon a melancholy man
Who had ended where his breath began.

Many a son and daughter lies
Far from the customary skies,

The Mall and Eades's grammar school,
In London or in Liverpool;

But where is laid the sailor John
That so many lands had known,

Quiet lands or unquiet seas
Where the Indians trade or Japanese?

He never found his rest ashore,
Moping for one voyage more.

Where have they laid the sailor John?
And yesterday the youngest son,

A humorous, unambitious man,
Was buried near the astrologer,

Yesterday in the tenth year
Since he who had been contented long.

A nobody in a great throng,
Decided he would journey home,

Now that his fiftieth year had come,
And "Mr. Alfred' be again

Upon the lips of common men
Who carried in their memory

His childhood and his family.
At all these death-beds women heard

A visionary white sea-bird
Lamenting that a man should die;

And with that cry I have raised my cry.
ALL SOULS' NIGHT

i{Epilogue to "A Vision'}
MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell

And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,

And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;

For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine

Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath

While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
I need some mind that, if the cannon sound

From every quarter of the world, can stay
Wound in mind's pondering

As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;
Because I have a marvellous thing to say,

A certain marvellous thing
None but the living mock,

Though not for sober ear;
It may be all that hear

Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
Horton's the first I call. He loved strange thought

And knew that sweet extremity of pride
That's called platonic love,

And that to such a pitch of passion wrought
Nothing could bring him, when his lady died,

Anodyne for his love.
Words were but wasted breath;

One dear hope had he:
The inclemency

Of that or the next winter would be death.
Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell

Whether of her or God he thought the most,
But think that his mind's eye,

When upward turned, on one sole image fell;
And that a slight companionable ghost,

Wild with divinity,
Had so lit up the whole

Immense miraculous house
The Bible promised us,

It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.
On Florence Emery I call the next,

Who finding the first wrinkles on a face
Admired and beautiful,

And knowing that the future would be vexed
With 'minished beauty, multiplied commonplace,

preferred to teach a school
Away from neighbour or friend,

Among dark skins, and there
permit foul years to wear

Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.
Before that end much had she ravelled out

From a discourse in figurative speech
By some learned Indian

On the soul's journey. How it is whirled about,
Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,

Until it plunge into the sun;
And there, free and yet fast,

Being both Chance and Choice,
Forget its broken toys

And sink into its own delight at last.
And I call up MacGregor from the grave,

For in my first hard springtime we were friends.
Although of late estranged.

I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,
And told him so, but friendship never ends;

And what if mind seem changed,
And it seem changed with the mind,

When thoughts rise up unbid
On generous things that he did

And I grow half contented to be blind!
He had much industry at setting out,

Much boisterous courage, before loneliness
Had driven him crazed;

For meditations upon unknown thought
Make human intercourse grow less and less;

They are neither paid nor praised.
but he d object to the host,

The glass because my glass;
A ghost-lover he was

And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.
But names are nothing. What matter who it be,

So that his elements have grown so fine
The fume of muscatel

Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy
No living man can drink from the whole wine.

I have mummy truths to tell
Whereat the living mock,

Though not for sober ear,
For maybe all that hear

Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
Such thought -- such thought have I that hold it tight

Till meditation master all its parts,
Nothing can stay my glance

Until that glance run in the world's despite
To where the damned have howled away their hearts,

And where the blessed dance;
Such thought, that in it bound

I need no other thing,
Wound in mind's wandering

As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.
AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN

I WALK through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;

The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,

To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way -- the children's eyes

In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire. a tale that she

Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy --

Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,

Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

• daylight [´deilait] n.日光；黎明 (初中英语单词)
• breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
• voyage [´vɔi-idʒ] n.&vi.航海；航程；旅行 (初中英语单词)
• yesterday [´jestədi] n.&ad.昨天；前不久 (初中英语单词)
• childhood [´tʃaildhud] n.幼年(时代)；早期 (初中英语单词)
• christ [kraist] n.基督 int.天啊! (初中英语单词)
• cannon [´kænən] n.大炮 (初中英语单词)
• passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
• upward [´ʌpwəd] a.&ad.向上(的)；以上 (初中英语单词)
• knowing [´nəuiŋ] a.会意的，心照不宣的 (初中英语单词)
• plunge [plʌndʒ] v.插进 n.投入；冲击 (初中英语单词)
• generous [´dʒenərəs] a.慷慨的；丰盛的 (初中英语单词)
• driven [´driv(ə)n] drive 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
• childish [´tʃaildiʃ] a.孩子的；幼稚的 (初中英语单词)
• tragedy [´trædʒidi] n.悲剧；惨案；灾难 (初中英语单词)
• youthful [´ju:θfəl] a.年轻的；青年的 (初中英语单词)
• pavement [´peivmənt] n.路面；铺筑材料 (高中英语单词)
• finding [´faindiŋ] n.发现物；判断；结果 (高中英语单词)
• learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
• melancholy [´melənkəli] n.忧郁 a.忧郁的 (高中英语单词)
• customary [´kʌstəməri] a.通常的；惯例的 (高中英语单词)
• contented [kən´tentid] a.满足的；心满意足的 (高中英语单词)
• extremity [ik´stremiti] n.末端；危机 (高中英语单词)
• discourse [´diskɔ:s] n.论文；演说；说教 (高中英语单词)
• damned [dæmd] a.该死的 ad.非常，极 (高中英语单词)
• sphere [sfiə] n.圆体；天体；范围 (高中英语单词)
• humorous [´hju:mərəs] a.富于幽默的，诙谐的 (英语四级单词)
• lesser [´lesə] a.较小的；次要的 (英语四级单词)
• florence [´flɔrəns] n.佛罗伦萨 (英语四级单词)
• springtime [´spriŋtaim] n.春季；青春期 (英语四级单词)
• setting [´setiŋ] n.安装；排字；布景 (英语四级单词)
• intercourse [´intəkɔ:s] n.交际；往来；交流 (英语四级单词)
• meditation [,medi´teiʃən] n.熟虑；默想 (英语四级单词)
• blessed [´blesid] a.享福的；神圣的 (英语四级单词)
• schoolroom [´sku:lru:m, -rum] n.教室 (英语四级单词)
• momentary [´məuməntəri] a.瞬息间的 (英语四级单词)
• trivial [´triviəl] a.琐碎的；不重要的 (英语四级单词)
• articulate [ɑ:´tikjulit] a.口齿清楚的 v.连接 (英语六级单词)
• miraculous [mi´rækjuləs] a.非凡的；奇迹般的 (英语六级单词)
• lunatic [´lu:nətik] a.精神错乱的 n.疯子 (英语六级单词)
• boisterous [´bɔistərəs] a.狂暴的；吵闹的 (英语六级单词)
• arrogant [´ærəgənt] a.傲慢的；自大的 (英语六级单词)
• reproof [ri´pru:f] n.谴责；责备 (英语六级单词)