Responsibilities, and other poems. William Butler Yeats

judgment has been given, and if guilty,

      Will never look again on known man's face.'

      And at these words he paled, as she had paled,

      Knowing that he should find upon her lips

      The meaning of that monstrous day.

      Then she:

      'You brought me where your brother Ardan sat

      Always in his one seat, and bid me care him

      Through that strange illness that had fixed him there,

      And should he die to heap his burial mound

      And carve his name in Ogham.' Eochaid said,

      'He lives?' 'He lives and is a healthy man.'

      'While I have him and you it matters little

      What man you have lost, what evil you have found.'

      'I bid them make his bed under this roof

      And carried him his food with my own hands,

      And so the weeks passed by. But when I said

      "What is this trouble?" he would answer nothing,

      Though always at my words his trouble grew;

      And I but asked the more, till he cried out,

      Weary of many questions: "There are things

      That make the heart akin to the dumb stone."

      Then I replied: "Although you hide a secret,

      Hopeless and dear, or terrible to think on,

      Speak it, that I may send through the wide world

      For medicine." Thereon he cried aloud:

      "Day after day you question me, and I,

      Because there is such a storm amid my thoughts

      I shall be carried in the gust, command,

      Forbid, beseech and waste my breath." Then I,

      "Although the thing that you have hid were evil,

      The speaking of it could be no great wrong,

      And evil must it be, if done 'twere worse

      Than mound and stone that keep all virtue in,

      And loosen on us dreams that waste our life,

      Shadows and shows that can but turn the brain."

      But finding him still silent I stooped down

      And whispering that none but he should hear,

      Said: "If a woman has put this on you,

      My men, whether it please her or displease,

      And though they have to cross the Loughlan waters

      And take her in the middle of armed men,

      Shall make her look upon her handiwork,

      That she may quench the rick she has fired; and though

      She may have worn silk clothes, or worn a crown,

      She'll not be proud, knowing within her heart

      That our sufficient portion of the world

      Is that we give, although it be brief giving,

      Happiness to children and to men."

      Then he, driven by his thought beyond his thought,

      And speaking what he would not though he would,

      Sighed: "You, even you yourself, could work the cure!"

      And at those words I rose and I went out

      And for nine days he had food from other hands,

      And for nine days my mind went whirling round

      The one disastrous zodiac, muttering

      That the immedicable mound's beyond

      Our questioning, beyond our pity even.

      But when nine days had gone I stood again

      Before his chair and bending down my head

      Told him, that when Orion rose, and all

      The women of his household were asleep,

      To go – for hope would give his limbs the power —

      To an old empty woodman's house that's hidden

      Close to a clump of beech trees in the wood

      Westward of Tara, there to await a friend

      That could, as he had told her, work his cure

      And would be no harsh friend.

      When night had deepened,

      I groped my way through boughs, and over roots,

      Till oak and hazel ceased and beech began,

      And found the house, a sputtering torch within,

      And stretched out sleeping on a pile of skins

      Ardan, and though I called to him and tried

      To shake him out of sleep, I could not rouse him.

      I waited till the night was on the turn,

      Then fearing that some labourer, on his way

      To plough or pasture-land, might see me there,

      Went out.

      Among the ivy-covered rocks,

      As on the blue light of a sword, a man

      Who had unnatural majesty, and eyes

      Like the eyes of some great kite scouring the woods,

      Stood on my path. Trembling from head to foot

      I gazed at him like grouse upon a kite;

      But with a voice that had unnatural music,

      "A weary wooing and a long," he said,

      "Speaking of love through other lips and looking

      Under the eyelids of another, for it was my craft

      That put a passion in the sleeper there,

      And when I had got my will and drawn you here,

      Where I may speak to you alone, my craft

      Sucked up the passion out of him again

      And left mere sleep. He'll wake when the sun wakes,

      Push out his vigorous limbs and rub his eyes,

      And wonder what has ailed him these twelve months."

      I cowered back upon the wall in terror,

      But that sweet-sounding voice ran on: "Woman,

      I was your husband when you rode the air,

      Danced in the whirling foam and in the dust,

      In days you have not kept in memory,

      Being betrayed into a cradle, and I come

      That I may claim you as my wife again."

      I was no longer terrified, his voice

      Had half awakened some old memory,

      Yet answered him: "I am King Eochaid's wife

      And with him have found every happiness

      Women can find." With a most masterful voice,

      That made the body seem as it were a string

      Under a bow, he cried: "What happiness

      Can lovers have that know their happiness

      Must end at the dumb stone? But where we build

      Our sudden palaces in the still air

      Pleasure itself can bring no weariness,

      Nor can time waste the cheek, nor is there foot

      That has grown weary of the whirling dance,

      Nor an unlaughing mouth, but mine that mourns,

      Among