The Wild Swans at Coole Part 2

My dear, my dear, I know More than another What makes your heart beat so; Not even your own mother Can know it as I know, Who broke my heart for her When the wild thought, That she denies And has forgot, Set all her blood astir And glittered in her eyes.

THE SCHOLARS

Bald heads forgetful of their sins, Old, learned, respectable bald heads Edit and annotate the lines That young men, tossing on their beds, Rhymed out in love's despair To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

They'll cough in the ink to the world's end; Wear out the carpet with their shoes Earning respect; have no strange friend; If they have sinned n.o.body knows.

Lord, what would they say Should their Catullus walk that way?

TOM O'ROUGHLEY

'Though logic choppers rule the town, And every man and maid and boy Has marked a distant object down, An aimless joy is a pure joy,'

Or so did Tom O'Roughley say That saw the surges running by, 'And wisdom is a b.u.t.terfly And not a gloomy bird of prey.

'If little planned is little sinned But little need the grave distress.

What's dying but a second wind?

How but in zigzag wantonness Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?'

Or something of that sort he said, 'And if my dearest friend were dead I'd dance a measure on his grave.'

THE SAD SHEPHERD

SHEPHERD

That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year I wished before it ceased.

GOATHERD

Nor bird nor beast Could make me wish for anything this day, Being old, but that the old alone might die, And that would be against G.o.d's Providence.

Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?

Never until this moment have we met Where my goats browse on the scarce gra.s.s or leap From stone to stone.

SHEPHERD

I am looking for strayed sheep; Something has troubled me and in my trouble I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone, For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble And make the daylight sweet once more; but when I had driven every rhyme into its place The sheep had gone from theirs.

GOATHERD

I know right well What turned so good a shepherd from his charge.

SHEPHERD

He that was best in every country sport And every country craft, and of us all Most courteous to slow age and hasty youth Is dead.

GOATHERD

The boy that brings my griddle cake Brought the bare news.

SHEPHERD

He had thrown the crook away And died in the great war beyond the sea.

GOATHERD

He had often played his pipes among my hills And when he played it was their loneliness, The exultation of their stone, that cried Under his fingers.

SHEPHERD

I had it from his mother, And his own flock was browsing at the door.

GOATHERD

How does she bear her grief? There is not a shepherd But grows more gentle when he speaks her name, Remembering kindness done, and how can I, That found when I had neither goat nor grazing New welcome and old wisdom at her fire Till winter blasts were gone, but speak of her Even before his children and his wife.

SHEPHERD

She goes about her house erect and calm Between the pantry and the linen chest, Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooks Her labouring men, as though her darling lived But for her grandson now; there is no change But such as I have seen upon her face Watching our shepherd sports at harvest-time When her son's turn was over.

GOATHERD

Sing your song, I too have rhymed my reveries, but youth Is hot to show whatever it has found And till that's done can neither work nor wait.

Old goatherds and old goats, if in all else Youth can excel them in accomplishment, Are learned in waiting.

SHEPHERD

You cannot but have seen That he alone had gathered up no gear, Set carpenters to work on no wide table, On no long bench nor lofty milking shed As others will, when first they take possession, But left the house as in his father's time As though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo, No settled man. And now that he is gone There's nothing of him left but half a score Of sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes.

GOATHERD

You have put the thought in rhyme.

SHEPHERD

I worked all day And when 'twas done so little had I done That maybe 'I am sorry' in plain prose Had sounded better to your mountain fancy.

[_He sings._

'Like the speckled bird that steers Thousands of leagues oversea, And runs for a while or a while half-flies Upon his yellow legs through our meadows, He stayed for a while; and we Had scarcely accustomed our ears To his speech at the break of day, Had scarcely accustomed our eyes To his shape in the lengthening shadows, Where the sheep are thrown in the pool, When he vanished from ears and eyes.

I had wished a dear thing on that day I heard him first, but man is a fool.'