The cat went here and there And the moon spun round like a top, And the nearest kin of the moon, The creeping cat, looked up. Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon, For, wander and wail as he would, The pure cold light in the sky Troubled his animal blood. Minnaloushe runs in the grass Lifting his delicate feet. Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance? When two close kindred meet. What better than call a dance? Maybe the moon may learn, Tired of that courtly fashion, A new dance turn. Minnaloushe creeps through the grass From moonlit place to place, The sacred moon overhead Has taken a new phase. Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils Will pass from change to change, And that from round to crescent, From crescent to round they range? Minnaloushe creeps through the grass Alone, important and wise, And lifts to the changing moon His changing eyes. |
THE CRAZED MOON
-by William Butler Yeats
Crazed through much child-bearing The moon is staggering in the sky; Moon-struck by the despairing Glances of her wandering eye We grope, and grope in vain, For children born of her pain. Children dazed or dead! When she in all her virginal pride First trod on the mountain's head What stir ran through the countryside Where every foot obeyed her glance! What manhood led the dance! Fly-catchers of the moon, Our hands are blenched, our fingers seem But slender needles of bone; Blenched by that malicious dream They are spread wide that each May rend what comes in reach.
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THE PHASES OF THE MOON
-by William Butler Yeats
An old man cocked his car upon a bridge; He and his friend, their faces to the South, Had trod the uneven road. Their hoots were soiled, Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape; They had kept a steady pace as though their beds, Despite a dwindling and late-risen moon, Were distant still. An old man cocked his ear. Aherne. What made that Sound?
Robartes. A rat or water-hen
Ahernc. Why should not you
Robartes. He wrote of me in that extravagant style
Aherne. Sing me the changes of the moon once more;
Robartes. Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon,
Aherne. Sing out the song; sing to the end, and sing
Robartes. All thought becomes an image and the soul
Aherne. All dreams of the soul Robartes, Have you not always known it?
Aherne. The song will have it Robartes. The lover's heart knows that.
Aherne. It must be that the terror in their eyes
Robartes. When the moon's full those creatures of the
And thereupon with aged, high-pitched voice
Robartes. And after that the crumbling of the moon.
Aherne. Before the full
Robartes. Because you are forgotten, half out of life,
Aherne. And what of those
Robartes. Because all dark, like those that are all light, Aherne. And then?
Rohartes. When all the dough has been so kneaded up Aherne. But the escape; the song's not finished yet.
{Robartes. Hunchback and Saint and Fool are the last
Aherne. Were not our beds far off I'd ring the bell,
And then he laughed to think that what seemed hard |
UNDER THE MOON
-by William Butler Yeats
I have no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde, Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle, Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while; Nor Uladh, when Naoise had thrown a sail upon the wind; Nor lands that seem too dim to be burdens on the heart: Land-under-Wave, where out of the moon's light and the sun's Seven old sisters wind the threads of the long-lived ones, Land-of-the-Tower, where Aengus has thrown the gates apart, And Wood-of-Wonders, where one kills an ox at dawn, To find it when night falls laid on a golden bier. Therein are many queens like Branwen and Guinevere; And Niamh and Laban and Fand, who could change to an otter or fawn, And the wood-woman, whose lover was changed to a blue-eyed hawk; And whether I go in my dreams by woodland, or dun, or shore, Or on the unpeopled waves with kings to pull at the oar, I hear the harp-string praise them, or hear their mournful talk. Because of something told under the famished horn Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day, To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dis may, Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne. |
BLOOD AND THE MOON
-by William Butler Yeats
Blessed be this place, More blessed still this tower; A bloody, arrogant power Rose out of the race Uttering, mastering it, Rose like these walls from these Storm-beaten cottages -- In mockery I have set A powerful emblem up, And sing it rhyme upon rhyme In mockery of a time HaIf dead at the top. Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the sun's journey and the moon's; And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers he called them once. I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my ancestral stair; That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there. Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had dragged him down into mankind, Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his mind, And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a tree, That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, cen- tury after century, Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality; And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a dream, That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its farrow that so solid seem, Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its theme;
Saeva Indignatio and the labourer's hire,
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This page was created by Cheryl Robertson at Moonlight Systems