Michael Robartes and the dancer — Text and Context

r a gibe To please a companion Around the fire at the club, Being certain that they and I But lived where motley is worn: All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent In ignorant good will, Her nights in argument Until her voice grew shrill. What voice more sweet than hers When young and beautiful, She rode to harriers? This man had kept a school And rode our winged horse. This other his helper and friend Was coming into his force; He might have won fame in the end, So sensitive his nature seemed, So daring and sweet his thought. This other man I had dreamed A drunken, vain-glorious lout. He had done most bitter wrong To some who are near my heart, Yet I number him in the song; He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; He, too, has been changed in his turn, Transformed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream. The horse that comes from the road. The rider, the birds that range From cloud to tumbling cloud, Minute by minute change; A shadow of cloud on the stream Changes minute by minute; A horse-hoof slides on the brim, And a horse plashes within it Where long-legged moor-hens dive, And hens to moor-cocks call. Minute by minute they live: The stone’s in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? That is heaven’s part, our part To murmur name upon name. As a mother names her child When sleep at last has come On limbs that had run wild. What is it but nightfall? No, no, not night but death; Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith For all that is done and said. We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead. And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? I write it out in a verse-- MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn. Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

September 25th, 1916.

O but we talked at large before The sixteen men were shot, But who can talk of give and take, What should be and what not? While those dead men are loitering there To stir the boiling pot.

You say that we should still the land Till Germany’s overcome; But who is there to argue that Now Pearse is deaf and dumb? And is their logic to outweigh MacDonagh’s bony thumb?

How could you dream they’d listen That have an ear alone For those new comrades they have found Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone, Or meddle with our give and take That converse bone to bone.

“O words are lightly spoken” Said Pearse to Connolly, “Maybe a breath of politic words Has withered our Rose Tree; Or maybe but a wind that blows Across the bitter sea.”

“It needs to be but watered,” James Connolly replied, “To make the green come out again And spread on every side, And shake the blossom from the bud To be the garden’s pride.”

“But where can we draw water” Said Pearse to Connolly, “When all the wells are parched away? O plain as plain can be There’s nothing but our own red blood Can make a right Rose Tree.”

ON A POLITICAL PRISONER

She that but little patience knew, From childhood on, had now so much A grey gull lost its fear and flew Down to her cell and there alit, And there endured her fingers touch And from her fingers ate its bit.

Did she in touching that lone wing Recall the years before her mind Became a bitter, an abstract thing, Her thought some popular enmity: Blind and leader of the blind Drinking the foul ditch where they lie?

When long ago I saw her ride Under Ben Bulban to the meet, The beauty of her country-side With all youth’s lonely wildness stirred, She seemed to have grown clean and sweet Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird:

Sea-borne, or balanced on the air When first it sprang out of the nest Upon some lofty rock to stare Upon the cloudy canopy, While under its storm-beaten breast Cried out the hollows of the sea.

THE LEADERS OF THE CROWD