The cat went here and thereAnd the moon spun round like a top,And the nearest kin of the moonThe creeping cat looked up.Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,For wander and wail as he wouldThe pure cold light in the skyTroubled his animal blood.Minnaloushe runs in the grass,Lifting his delicate feet.Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?When two close kindred meetWhat better than call a dance,Maybe the moon may learn,Tired of that courtly fashion,A new dance turn.Minnaloushe creeps through the grassFrom moonlit place to place,The sacred moon overheadHas taken a new phase.Does Minnaloushe know that his pupilsWill pass from change to change,And that from round to crescent,From crescent to round they range?Minnaloushe creeps through the grassAlone, important and wise,And lifts to the changing moonHis changing eyes.
The cat went here and thereAnd the moon spun round like a top,And the nearest kin of the moonThe creeping cat looked up.Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,For wander and wail as he wouldThe pure cold light in the skyTroubled his animal blood.Minnaloushe runs in the grass,Lifting his delicate feet.Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?When two close kindred meetWhat better than call a dance,Maybe the moon may learn,Tired of that courtly fashion,A new dance turn.Minnaloushe creeps through the grassFrom moonlit place to place,The sacred moon overheadHas taken a new phase.Does Minnaloushe know that his pupilsWill pass from change to change,And that from round to crescent,From crescent to round they range?Minnaloushe creeps through the grassAlone, important and wise,And lifts to the changing moonHis changing eyes.
Hunchback
Stand up and lift your hand and blessA man that finds great bitternessIn thinking of his lost renown.A Roman Caesar is held downUnder this hump.
Saint
God tries each manAccording to a different plan.I shall not cease to bless becauseI lay about me with the tawsThat night and morning I may thrashGreek Alexander from my flesh,Augustus Caesar, and after theseThat great rogue Alcibiades.
Hunchback
To all that in your flesh have stoodAnd blessed, I give my gratitude,Honoured by all in their degrees,But most to Alcibiades.
A speckled cat and a tame hareEat at my hearthstoneAnd sleep there;And both look up to me aloneFor learning and defenceAs I look up to Providence.I start out of my sleep to thinkSome day I may forgetTheir food and drink;Or, the house door left unshut,The hare may run till it's foundThe horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.I bear a burden that might well tryMen that do all by rule,And what can IThat am a wandering witted foolBut pray to God that He easeMy great responsibilities.
A speckled cat and a tame hareEat at my hearthstoneAnd sleep there;And both look up to me aloneFor learning and defenceAs I look up to Providence.
I start out of my sleep to thinkSome day I may forgetTheir food and drink;Or, the house door left unshut,The hare may run till it's foundThe horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.
I bear a burden that might well tryMen that do all by rule,And what can IThat am a wandering witted foolBut pray to God that He easeMy great responsibilities.
I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire,The speckled cat slept on my knee;We never thought to enquireWhere the brown hare might be,And whether the door were shut.Who knows how she drank the windStretched up on two legs from the mat,Before she had settled her mindTo drum with her heel and to leap:Had I but awakened from sleepAnd called her name she had heard,It may be, and had not stirred,That now, it may be, has foundThe horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.
I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire,The speckled cat slept on my knee;We never thought to enquireWhere the brown hare might be,And whether the door were shut.Who knows how she drank the windStretched up on two legs from the mat,Before she had settled her mindTo drum with her heel and to leap:Had I but awakened from sleepAnd called her name she had heard,It may be, and had not stirred,That now, it may be, has foundThe horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.
This great purple butterfly,In the prison of my hands,Has a learning in his eyeNot a poor fool understands.Once he lived a schoolmasterWith a stark, denying look,A string of scholars went in fearOf his great birch and his great book.Like the clangour of a bell,Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet,That is how he learnt so wellTo take the roses for his meat.
This great purple butterfly,In the prison of my hands,Has a learning in his eyeNot a poor fool understands.
Once he lived a schoolmasterWith a stark, denying look,A string of scholars went in fearOf his great birch and his great book.
Like the clangour of a bell,Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet,That is how he learnt so wellTo take the roses for his meat.
On the grey rock of Cashel the mind's eyeHas called up the cold spirits that are bornWhen the old moon is vanished from the skyAnd the new still hides her horn.Under blank eyes and fingers never stillThe particular is pounded till it is man,When had I my own will?Oh, not since life began.Constrained, arraigned, baffled, bent and unbentBy these wire-jointed jaws and limbs of wood,Themselves obedient,Knowing not evil and good;Obedient to some hidden magical breath.They do not even feel, so abstract are they,So dead beyond our death,Triumph that we obey.
On the grey rock of Cashel the mind's eyeHas called up the cold spirits that are bornWhen the old moon is vanished from the skyAnd the new still hides her horn.
Under blank eyes and fingers never stillThe particular is pounded till it is man,When had I my own will?Oh, not since life began.
Constrained, arraigned, baffled, bent and unbentBy these wire-jointed jaws and limbs of wood,Themselves obedient,Knowing not evil and good;
Obedient to some hidden magical breath.They do not even feel, so abstract are they,So dead beyond our death,Triumph that we obey.
On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly sawA Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw,A Buddha, hand at rest,Hand lifted up that blest;And right between these two a girl at playThat it may be had danced her life away,For now being dead it seemedThat she of dancing dreamed.Although I saw it all in the mind's eyeThere can be nothing solider till I die;I saw by the moon's lightNow at its fifteenth night.One lashed her tail; her eyes lit by the moonGazed upon all things known, all things unknown,In triumph of intellectWith motionless head erect.That other's moonlit eyeballs never moved,Being fixed on all things loved, all things unloved,Yet little peace he hadFor those that love are sad.Oh, little did they care who danced between,And little she by whom her dance was seenSo that she danced. No thought,Body perfection brought,For what but eye and ear silence the mindWith the minute particulars of mankind?Mind moved yet seemed to stopAs 'twere a spinning-top.In contemplation had those three so wroughtUpon a moment, and so stretched it outThat they, time overthrown,Were dead yet flesh and bone.
On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly sawA Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw,A Buddha, hand at rest,Hand lifted up that blest;
And right between these two a girl at playThat it may be had danced her life away,For now being dead it seemedThat she of dancing dreamed.
Although I saw it all in the mind's eyeThere can be nothing solider till I die;I saw by the moon's lightNow at its fifteenth night.
One lashed her tail; her eyes lit by the moonGazed upon all things known, all things unknown,In triumph of intellectWith motionless head erect.
That other's moonlit eyeballs never moved,Being fixed on all things loved, all things unloved,Yet little peace he hadFor those that love are sad.
Oh, little did they care who danced between,And little she by whom her dance was seenSo that she danced. No thought,Body perfection brought,
For what but eye and ear silence the mindWith the minute particulars of mankind?Mind moved yet seemed to stopAs 'twere a spinning-top.
In contemplation had those three so wroughtUpon a moment, and so stretched it outThat they, time overthrown,Were dead yet flesh and bone.
I knew that I had seen, had seen at lastThat girl my unremembering nights hold fastOr else my dreams that fly,If I should rub an eye,And yet in flying fling into my meatA crazy juice that makes the pulses beatAs though I had been undoneBy Homer's ParagonWho never gave the burning town a thought;To such a pitch of folly I am brought,Being caught between the pullOf the dark moon and the full,The commonness of thought and imagesThat have the frenzy of our Western seas.Thereon I made my moan,And after kissed a stone,And after that arranged it in a songSeeing that I, ignorant for so long,Had been rewarded thusIn Cormac's ruined house.
I knew that I had seen, had seen at lastThat girl my unremembering nights hold fastOr else my dreams that fly,If I should rub an eye,
And yet in flying fling into my meatA crazy juice that makes the pulses beatAs though I had been undoneBy Homer's Paragon
Who never gave the burning town a thought;To such a pitch of folly I am brought,Being caught between the pullOf the dark moon and the full,
The commonness of thought and imagesThat have the frenzy of our Western seas.Thereon I made my moan,And after kissed a stone,
And after that arranged it in a songSeeing that I, ignorant for so long,Had been rewarded thusIn Cormac's ruined house.
"Unpack the loaded pern," p. 36.
When I was a child at Sligo I could see above my grandfather's trees a little column of smoke from "the pern mill," and was told that "pern" was another name for the spool, as I was accustomed to call it, on which thread was wound. One could not see the chimney for the trees, and the smoke looked as if it came from the mountain, and one day a foreign sea-captain asked me if that was a burning mountain.
W. B. Y.
Printed in the United States of America.
Transcriber's NotePage64: "lecturn"sic—alternative spelling confirmed.
Page64: "lecturn"sic—alternative spelling confirmed.