The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

and round the oatmeal-chest.

      For he comes, the human child,

      To the waters and the wild

      With a faery, hand in hand,

      From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.

TO AN ISLE IN THE WATER

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      Shy one, shy one,

      Shy one of my heart,

      She moves in the firelight

      Pensively apart.

      She carries in the dishes,

      And lays them in a row.

      To an isle in the water

      With her would I go.

      She carries in the candles

      And lights the curtained room,

      Shy in the doorway

      And shy in the gloom;

      And shy as a rabbit,

      Helpful and shy.

      To an isle in the water

      With her would I fly.

DOWN BY THE SALLEY GARDENS

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      Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;

      She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

      She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

      But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

      In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

      And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

      She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

      But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

THE MEDITATION OF THE OLD FISHERMAN

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      You waves, though you dance by my feet like children at play,

      Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and you dart;

      In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves were more gay,

      When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.

      The herring are not in the tides as they were of old;

      My sorrow! for many a creak gave the creel in the cart

      That carried the take to Sligo town to be sold,

      When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.

      And ah, you proud maiden, you are not so fair when his oar

      Is heard on the water, as they were, the proud and apart,

      Who paced in the eve by the nets on the pebbly shore,

      When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.

THE BALLAD OF FATHER O’HART

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      Good Father John O’Hart

      In penal days rode out

      To a shoneen who had free lands

      And his own snipe and trout.

      In trust took he John’s lands;

      Sleiveens were all his race;

      And he gave them as dowers to his daughters,

      And they married beyond their place.

      But Father John went up,

      And Father John went down;

      And he wore small holes in his shoes,

      And he wore large holes in his gown.

      All loved him, only the shoneen,

      Whom the devils have by the hair,

      From the wives, and the cats, and the children,

      To the birds in the white of the air.

      The birds, for he opened their cages

      As he went up and down;

      And he said with a smile, ‘Have peace now’;

      And he went his way with a frown.

      But if when any one died

      Came keeners hoarser than rooks,

      He bade them give over their keening;

      For he was a man of books.

      And these were the works of John,

      When weeping score by score,

      People came into Coloony;

      For he’d died at ninety-four.

      There was no human keening;

      The birds from Knocknarea

      And the world round Knocknashee

      Came keening in that day.

      The young birds and old birds

      Came flying, heavy and sad;

      Keening in from Tiraragh,

      Keening from Ballinafad;

      Keening from Inishmurray,

      Nor stayed for bite or sup;

      This way were all reproved

      Who dig old customs up.

THE BALLAD OF MOLL MAGEE

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      Come round me, little childer;

      There, don’t fling stones at me

      Because I mutter as I go;

      But pity Moll Magee.

      My man was a poor fisher

      With shore lines in the say;

      My work was saltin’ herrings

      The whole of the long day.

      And sometimes from the saltin’ shed,

      I scarce could drag my feet

      Under the blessed moonlight,

      Along the pebbly street.

      I’d always been but weakly,

      And my baby was just born;

      A neighbour minded her by day,

      I minded her till morn.

      I lay upon my baby;

      Ye little childer dear,

      I looked on my cold baby

      When