Seven Poems and a Fragment

by W. B. Yeats

THOUGHTS UPON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE WORLD.

I

Many ingenious lovely things are gone That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude; Above the murderous treachery of the moon Or all that wayward ebb and flow. There stood Amid the ornamental bronze and stone An ancient image made of olive wood; And gone are Phidias’ carven ivories And all his golden grasshoppers and bees. We too had many pretty toys when young; A law indifferent to blame or praise To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong Melt down, as it were wax in the sun’s rays; Public opinion ripening for so long We thought it would outlive all future days. O what fine thought we had because we thought That the worst rogues and rascals had died out. All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned, And a great army but a showy thing; What matter that no cannon had been turned Into a ploughshare; parliament and king Thought that unless a little powder burned The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting And yet it lack all glory; and perchance The guardsmen’s drowsy chargers would not prance. Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery Can leave the mother, murdered at her door, To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free; The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule Who are but weasels fighting in a hole. He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant From shallow wits, who knows no work can stand, Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent On master work of intellect or hand, No honour leave its mighty monument, Has but one comfort left: all triumph would But break upon his ghostly solitude. And other comfort were a bitter wound: To be in love and love what vanishes. Greeks were but lovers; all that country round None dared admit, if such a thought were his, Incendiary or bigot could be found To burn that stump on the Acropolis, Or break in bits the famous ivories Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees?

II

When Loie Fuller’s Chinese dancers enwound A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth, It seemed that a dragon of air Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round Or hurried them off on its own furious path; So the platonic year Whirls out new right and wrong Whirls in the old instead; All men are dancers and their tread Goes to the barbarous clangour of gong.

III

Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am content with that, Contented that a troubled mirror show it Before that brief gleam of its life be gone, An image of its state; The wings half spread for flight, The breast thrust out in pride Whether to play or to ride Those winds that clamour of approaching night. A man in his own secret meditation Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made In art or politics; Some platonist affirms that in the station Where we should cast off body and trade The ancient habit sticks, And that if our works could But vanish with our breath That were a lucky death, For triumph can but mar our solitude. The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven: That image can bring wildness, bring a rage To end all things, to end What my laborious life imagined, even The half imagined, the half written page; O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

IV

We, who seven years ago Talked of honour and of truth, Shriek with pleasure if we show The weasel’s twist, the weasel’s tooth.