The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

when will you grow weary?’

      They had vanished;

      But out of the dark air over her head there came

      A murmur of soft words and meeting lips.

      [51]

       [52]

       [53]

BAILE AND AILLINN

       Table of Contents

      Argument. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the Master of Love, wishing them to be happy in his own land among the dead, told to each a story of the other’s death, so that their hearts were broken and they died.

      I hardly hear the curlew cry,

      Nor the grey rush when the wind is high,

      Before my thoughts begin to run

      On the heir of Ulad, Buan’s son,

      Baile, who had the honey mouth;

      And that mild woman of the south,

      Aillinn, who was King Lugaid’s heir.

      Their love was never drowned in care

      Of this or that thing, nor grew cold

      Because their bodies had grown old.

      Being forbid to marry on earth,

      They blossomed to immortal mirth.

      About the time when Christ was born,

      When the long wars for the White Horn

      And the Brown Bull had not yet come,

      Young Baile Honey-Mouth, whom some

      Called rather Baile Little-Land,

      Rode out of Emain with a band

      Of harpers and young men; and they

      Imagined, as they struck the way

      To many-pastured Muirthemne,

      That all things fell out happily,

      And there, for all that fools had said,

      Baile and Aillinn would be wed.

      They found an old man running there:

      He had ragged long grass-coloured hair;

      He had knees that stuck out of his hose;

      He had puddle water in his shoes;

      He had half a cloak to keep him dry,

      Although he had a squirrel’s eye.

      O wandering birds and rushy beds,

      You put such folly in our heads

      With all this crying in the wind;

      No common love is to our mind,

      And our poor Kate or Nan is less

      Than any whose unhappiness

      Awoke the harp-strings long ago.

      Yet they that know all things but know

      That all life had to give us is

      A child’s laughter, a woman’s kiss.

      Who was it put so great a scorn

      In the grey reeds that night and morn

      Are trodden and broken by the herds,

      And in the light bodies of birds

      That north wind tumbles to and fro

      And pinches among hail and snow?

      That runner said: ‘I am from the south;

      I run to Baile Honey-Mouth,

      To tell him how the girl Aillinn

      Rode from the country of her kin,

      And old and young men rode with her:

      For all that country had been astir

      If anybody half as fair

      Had chosen a husband anywhere

      But where it could see her every day.

      When they had ridden a little way

      An old man caught the horse’s head

      With: “You must home again, and wed

      With somebody in your own land.”

      A young man cried and kissed her hand,

      “O lady, wed with one of us”;

      And when no face grew piteous

      For any gentle thing she spake,

      She fell and died of the heart-break.’

      Because a lover’s heart’s worn out,

      Being tumbled and blown about

      By its own blind imagining,

      And will believe that anything

      That is bad enough to be true, is true,

      Baile’s heart was broken in two;

      And he being laid upon green boughs,

      Was carried to the goodly house

      Where the Hound of Ulad sat before

      The brazen pillars of his door,

      His face bowed low to weep the end

      Of the harper’s daughter and her friend.

      For although years had passed away

      He always wept them on that day,

      For on that day they had been betrayed;

      And now that Honey-Mouth is laid

      Under a cairn of sleepy stone

      Before his eyes, he has tears for none,

      Although he is carrying stone, but two

      For whom the cairn’s but heaped anew.

      We hold because our memory is

      So full of that thing and of this

      That out of sight is out of mind.

      But the grey rush under the wind

      And the grey bird with crooked bill

      Have such long memories, that they still

      Remember Deirdre and her man;

      And when we walk with Kate or Nan

      About the windy water side,

      Our heart can hear the voices chide.

      How could we be so soon content,

      Who know the way that Naoise went?

      And they have news of Deirdre’s eyes,

      Who being lovely was so wise—

      Ah! wise, my heart knows well how wise.

      Now had that old gaunt crafty one,

      Gathering his cloak about him, run

      Where Aillinn rode with waiting maids,

      Who amid leafy lights and shades

      Dreamed of the hands that would unlace

      Their bodices in some dim place

      When they had come to the marriage bed;

      And