The blessedest souls that walk in the world
To fill your heart with content."

"And which is the blessedest,' Cumhal said,
"Where all are comely and good?

Is it these that with golden thuribles
Are singing about the wood?"

"My eyes are blinking,' Dathi said,
"With the secrets of God half blind,

But I can see where the wind goes
And follow the way of the wind;

"And blessedness goes where the wind goes,
And when it is gone we are dead;

I see the blessedest soul in the world
And he nods a drunken head.

"O blessedness comes in the night and the day
And whither the wise heart knows;

And one has seen in the redness of wine
The Incorruptible Rose,

"That drowsily drops faint leaves on him
And the sweetness of desire,

While time and the world are ebbing away
In twilights of dew and of fire."

THE CAT AND THE MOON
THE cat went here and there

And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,

The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,

For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky

Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass

Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?

When two close kindred meet.
What better than call a dance?

Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,

A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass

From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead

Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils

Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,

From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass

Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon

His changing eyes.
THE COLD HEAVEN

SUDDENLY I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the

more ice,
And thereuponimagination and heart were driven

So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out

of season
With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;

And I took all thc blame out of all sense and reason,
Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,

Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to
quicken,

Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken

By the injustice of the skies for punishment?
THE CRAZED MOON

CRAZED through much child-bearing
The moon is staggering in the sky;

Moon-struck by the despairing
Glances of her wandering eye

We grope, and grope in vain,
For children born of her pain.

Children dazed or dead!
When she in all her virginal pride

First trod on the mountain's head
What stir ran through the countryside

Where every foot obeyed her glance!
What manhood led the dance!

Fly-catchers of the moon,
Our hands are blenched, our fingers seem

But slender needles of bone;
Blenched by that malicious dream

They are spread wide that each
May rend what comes in reach.

THE DOLLS
A DOLL in the doll-maker's house

Looks at the cradle and bawls:
"That is an insult to us.'

But the oldest of all the dolls,
Who had seen, being kept for show,

Generations of his sort,
Out-screams the whole shelf: 'Although

There's not a man can report
Evil of this place,

The man and the woman bring
Hither, to our disgrace,

A noisy and filthy thing.'
Hearing him groan and stretch

The doll-maker's wife is aware
Her husband has heard the wretch,

And crouched by the arm of his chair,
She murmurs into his ear,

Head upon shoulder leant:
"My dear, my dear, O dear.

It was an accident.'
THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY

WHEN I play on my fiddle in Dooney.
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;

My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Mocharabuiee.

I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;

I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.

When we come at the end of time
To Peter sitting in state,

He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,

And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,

With "Here is the fiddler of Dooney!"
And dance like a wave of the sea.

THE FISHERMAN
ALTHOUGH I can see him still.

The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill

In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,

It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes

This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face

What I had hoped 'twould be
To write for my own race

And the reality;
The living men that I hate,

The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,

The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book

Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke

Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries

The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise

And great Art beaten down.
Maybe a twelvemonth since

Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,

Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,

And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place

Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist

When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,

A man who is but a dream;
And cried, "Before I am old

I shall have written him one
poem maybe as cold

And passionate as the dawn.'
THE FOOL BY THE ROADSIDE

WHEN all works that have
From cradle run to grave

From grave to cradle run instead;
When thoughts that a fool

Has wound upon a spool
Are but loose thread, are but loose thread;

When cradle and spool are past
And I mere shade at last

Coagulate of stuff
Transparent like the wind,

I think that I may find
A faithful love, a faithful love.

THE GREY ROCK
i{Poets with whom I learned my trade.}

i{Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,}
i{Here's an old story I've remade,}

i{Imagining 'twould better please}
i{Your cars than stories now in fashion,}

i{Though you may think I waste my breath}
i{Pretending that there can be passion}

i{That has more life in it than death,}
i{And though at bottling of your wine}

i{Old wholesome Goban had no say;}
i{The moral's yours because it's mine.}

When cups went round at close of day --
Is not that how good stories run? --

The gods were sitting at the board
In their great house at Slievenamon.

They sang a drowsy song, Or snored,
For all were full of wine and meat.

The smoky torches made a glare

• drunken [´drʌŋkən] a.喝醉的；常醉的 (初中英语单词)
• wander [´wɔndə, ´wɑ:n:dər] v.徘徊；流浪 (初中英语单词)
• delicate [´delikət] a.精美的；微妙的 (初中英语单词)
• sacred [´seikrid] a.神圣的；庄严的 (初中英语单词)
• thereupon [,ðeərə´pɔn] ad.因此；于是 (初中英语单词)
• imagination [i,mædʒi´neiʃən] n.想象(力) (初中英语单词)
• slender [´slendə] a.细长的；微薄的 (初中英语单词)
• cradle [´kreidl] n.摇篮；发源地 (初中英语单词)
• insult [in´sʌlt, ´insʌlt] n.&vt.侮辱；损害 (初中英语单词)
• priest [pri:st] n.教士；牧师；神父 (初中英语单词)
• beaten [´bi:tn] beat 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
• faithful [´feiθfəl] a.忠实的；可靠的 (初中英语单词)
• sweetness [´swi:tnis] n.甜蜜；芳香；亲切 (高中英语单词)
• kindred [´kindrid] n.亲属关系；同源关系 (高中英语单词)
• casual [´kæʒuəl] a.偶然的；临时的 (高中英语单词)
• injustice [in´dʒʌstis] n.不公正，不公平 (高中英语单词)
• manhood [´mænhud] n.人格；男子气概 (高中英语单词)
• passionate [´pæʃənit] a.易动情的；易怒的 (高中英语单词)
• learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
• wholesome [´həulsəm] a.有益于健康的 (高中英语单词)
• drowsy [´drauzi] a.困倦的；催眠的 (高中英语单词)
• comely [´kʌmli] a.秀丽的；文雅的 (英语四级单词)
• crescent [´kresənt] n.月牙 a.新月形的 (英语四级单词)
• filthy [´filθi] a.污秽的，肮脏的 (英语四级单词)
• fiddle [´fidl] n.小提琴 v.拉提琴 (英语四级单词)
• freckled [´frekld] a.有雀斑的，有斑点的 (英语四级单词)
• moonlit [´mu:n,lit] a.月光普照的 (英语六级单词)
• malicious [mə´liʃəs] a.恶意的；预谋的 (英语六级单词)
• insolent [´insələnt] a.傲慢的；无礼的 (英语六级单词)
• beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)