He had
learnt from pater, and to round his tale
Said I was dead; and dead I choose to be.
i{Aherne.} Sing me the changes of the moon once more;
True song, though speech: "mine author sung it me.'
i{Robartes.} Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon,
The full and the moon's dark and all the
crescents,
Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty
The
cradles that a man must needs be rocked in:
For there's no human life at the full or the dark.
From the first
crescent to the half, the dream
But summons to adventure and the man
Is always happy like a bird or a beast;
But while the moon is rounding towards the full
He follows
whatever whim's most difficult
Among whims not impossible, and though scarred.
As with the cat-o'-nine-tails of the mind,
His body moulded from within his body
Grows comelier. Eleven pass, and then
Athene takes Achilles by the hair,
Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born,
Because the hero's
crescent is the twelfth.
And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must,
Before the full moon,
helpless as a worm.
The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war
In its own being, and when that war's begun
There is no
muscle in the arm; and after,
Under the
frenzy of the fourteenth moon,
The soul begins to tremble into stillness,
To die into the
labyrinth of itself!
i{Aherne.} Sing out the song; sing to the end, and sing
The strange
reward of all that discipline.
i{Robartes.} All thought becomes an image and the soul
Becomes a body: that body and that soul
Too perfect at the full to lie in a
cradle,
Too
lonely for the
traffic of the world:
Body and soul cast out and cast away
Beyond the
visible world.
i{Aherne.} All dreams of the soul
End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.
i{Robartes,} Have you not always known it?
i{Aherne.} The song will have it
That those that we have loved got their long fingers
From death, and wounds, or on Sinai's top,
Or from some
bloody whip in their own hands.
They ran from
cradle to
cradle till at last
Their beauty dropped out of the loneliness
Of body and soul.
i{Robartes.} The lover's heart knows that.
i{Aherne.} It must be that the
terror in their eyes
Is memory or foreknowledge of the hour
When all is fed with light and heaven is bare.
i{Robartes.} When the moon's full those creatures of the
full
Are met on the waste hills by countrymen
Who
shudder and hurry by: body and soul
Estranged amid the strangeness of themselves,
Caught up in
contemplation, the mind's eye
Fixed upon images that once were thought;
For separate, perfect, and immovable
Images can break the solitude
Of lovely, satisfied,
indifferent eyes.
i{And
thereupon with aged, high-pitched voice}
i{Aherne laughed, thinking of the man within,}
i{His
sleepless candle and lahorious pen.}
i{Robartes.} And after that the crumbling of the moon.
The soul remembering its loneliness
Shudders in many
cradles; all is changed,
It would be the world's servant, and as it serves,
Choosing
whatever task's most difficult
Among tasks not impossible, it takes
Upon the body and upon the soul
The coarseness of the drudge.
i{Aherne.} Before the full
It sought itself and afterwards the world.
i{Robartes.} Because you are forgotten, half out of life,
And never wrote a book, your thought is clear.
Reformer, merchant,
statesman,
learned man,
Dutiful husband, honest wife by turn,
Cradle upon
cradle, and all in
flight and all
Deformed because there is no
deformityBut saves us from a dream.
i{Aherne.} And what of those
That the last servile
crescent has set free?
i{Robartes.} Because all dark, like those that are all light,
They are cast beyond the verge, and in a cloud,
Crying to one another like the bats;
And having no desire they cannot tell
What's good or bad, or what it is to triumph
At the
perfection of one's own obedience;
And yet they speak what's blown into the mind;
Deformed beyond
deformity, unformed,
Insipid as the dough before it is baked,
They change their bodies at a word.
i{Aherne.} And then?
i{Rohartes.} When all the dough has been so kneaded up
That it can take what form cook Nature fancies,
The first thin
crescent is wheeled round once more.
i{Aherne.} But the escape; the song's not finished yet.
i{Robartes.} Hunchback and Saint and Fool are the last
crescents.
The burning bow that once could shoot an arrow
Out of the up and down, the wagon-wheel
Of beauty's
cruelty and wisdom's
chatter --
Out of that raving tide -- is drawn betwixt
Deformity of body and of mind.
i{Aherne.} Were not our beds far off I'd ring the bell,
Stand under the rough roof-timbers of the hall
Beside the castle door, where all is stark
Austerity, a place set out for wisdom
That he will never find; I'd play a part;
He would never know me after all these years
But take me for some
drunken countryman:
I'd stand and
mutter there until he caught
"Hunchback and Sant and Fool,' and that they came
Under the three last
crescents of the moon.
And then I'd
stagger out. He'd crack his wits
Day after day, yet never find the meaning.
i{And then he laughed to think that what seemed hard}
i{Should be so simple -- a bat rose from the hazels}
i{And circled round him with its squeaky cry,}
i{The light in the tower window was put out.}
THE PLAYERS ASK FOR A BLESSING ON THE PSALTERIES AND ON THEMSELVES
i{Three Voices [together].} Hurry to bless the hands that play,
The mouths that speak, the notes and strings,
O masters of the glittering town!
O! lay the
shrillytrumpet down,
Though
drunken with the flags that sway
Over the ramparts and the towers,
And with the waving of your wings.
i{First Voice.} Maybe they
linger by the way.
One gathers up his
purple gown;
One leans and
mutters by the wall --
He dreads the weight of
mortal hours.
i{Second Voice.} O no, O no! they hurry down
Like plovers that have heard the call.
i{Third Voice.} O kinsmen of the Three in One,
O kinsmen, bless the hands that play.
The notes they waken shall live on
When all this heavy history's done;
Our hands, our hands must ebb away.
i{Three Voices [together].} The proud and
careless notes live on,
But bless our hands that ebb away.
THE RAGGED WOOD
O HURRY where by water among the trees
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have but looked upon their images --
Would none had ever loved but you and I!
Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood? --
O that none ever loved but you and I!
O hurty to the
ragged wood, for there
I will drive all those lovers out and cry --
O my share of the world, O yellow hair!
No one has ever loved but you and I.
THE ROSE
TO THE ROSE UPON THE ROOD OF TIME
i{Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!}
i{Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:}
i{Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;}
i{The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,}
i{Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;}
i{And thine own
sadness, where of stars, grown old}
i{In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea,}
i{Sing in their high and
lonely melody.}
i{Come near, that no more blinded hy man's fate,}
i{I find under the boughs of love and hate,}
i{In all poor foolish things that live a day,}
i{Eternal beauty wandering on her way.}
i{Come near, come near, come near -- Ah, leave me still}
i{A little space for the rose-breath to fill!}
i{Lest I no more bear common things that crave;}
i{The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,}
i{The field-mouse
running by me in the grass,}
i{And heavy
mortal hopes that toil and pass;}
i{But seek alone to hear the strange things said}
i{By God to the bright hearts of those long dead,}
i{And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know.}
i{Come near; I would, before my time to go,}
i{Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:}
i{Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.}
THE SAINT AND THE HUNCHBACK
i{Hunchback.} Stand up and lift your hand and bless
A man that finds great bitterness
In thinking of his lost renown.
A Roman Caesar is held down
Under this hump.
i{Saint.} God tries each man
According to a different plan.
I shall not cease to bless because
I lay about me with the taws
That night and morning I may thrash
Greek Alexander from my flesh,
Augustus Caesar, and after these
That great rogue Alcibiades.
i{Hunchback.} To all that in your flesh have stood
And
blessed, I give my gratitude,
Honoured by all in their degrees,
But most to Alcibiades.
THE SECOND COMING
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre