To William Butler Yeats

Merry the night, you riders of the wild!A merry night to ride your wilderness.Come you from visionary haunts, enisledAmid the northern waters pitiless,Over these cliffs white-heathered? Upon mildMidnights of dewy June, oh, rare to pressPast moonlit fields of white bean-flowers! nor lessTo wander beside falling waves, beguiledBy soft winds into still dreams! Yet confess,You chivalries of air, unreconciledTo the warm, breathing world! what ghostly stressCompels your visit unto sorrow's child?

What would you here? For here you have no part:Only the sad voices of wind and seaAre prophets here to any wistful heart:Or white flowers found upon a glimmering lea.What would you here? Sweep onward, and departOver the ocean into Brittany,Where old faith is, and older mystery!Though this be western land, we have no artTo welcome spirits in community:Trafficking, in an high celestial mart,Slumber for wondrous knowledge: setting freeOur souls, that strain and agonize and start.

The wind hath cried to me, all the long day,That you were coming, chivalries of air!Between the waters and the starry way.Fair lies the sea about a land, as fair:Moonlight and west winds move upon the bayGently: now down the rough path sweet it wereTo clamber, and so launching out to fareForth for the heart of sea and night, awayFrom hard earth's loud uproar, and harder care!But you at will about the winds can stray:Or bid the wandering stars of midnight bearYou company: or with the seven stay.

And yet you came for me! So the wind cried,So my soul knows: else why am I awakeWith expectation and desire, besideThe soothed sea's murmuring nocturnal lake?Not sleep, but storm, welcomes a widowed bride:Storms of sad certainty, vain want, that makeVigil perpetual mine; so that I takeThe gusty night in place of him, who died,To clasp me home to heart. That cannot break,The eternal heart of nature far and wide!So now, your message! while the clear stars shakeWithin the gleaming sea, shake and abide.

So now, your message! Breathe words from the wave,Or breathe words from the field, into mine ears:Or from the sleeping shades of a cold graveBring comfortable solace for my tears.Something of my love's heart could nature save:Some rich delight to spice the tasteless years,Some hope to light the valley of lone fears.Hear! I am left alone, to bear and braveThe sounding storms: but you, from starry spheres,From wild wood haunts, give me, as love once gaveJoy from his home celestial, so, love's peers!Give peace awhile to me, sorrow's poor slave!

In sorrow's order I dwell passionist,Cloistered by tossing sea on weary land.O vain love! vain, to claim me votarist:O vain my heart! that will not understand,He is dead! I am lonely! Love in a MistMy flower is: and salt tangle of the strand,The crownals woven by this failing hand:In the dark kingdom, walking where I list,I walk where Lethe glides against the sand.But vain love is a constant lutanist,Playing old airs, and able to withstandSweet sleep: vain love, thou loyal melodist!

You wanderers! Would I were wanderingUnder the white moon with you, or amongThe invisible stars with you! Would I might singOver the charmed sea your enchaunting song,Song of old autumn, and of radiant spring:Might sing, how earth the mother suffers long;How the great winds are wild, yet do no wrong;How the most frail bloom is at heart a king!I could endure then, strenuous and strong:But now, O spirits of the air! I bringBefore you my waste soul: why will you throngAbout me, save to take even such a thing?

Only for this you ride the midnight gloom,Above the ancient isles of the old main.The spray leaps on the hidden rocks of doom:The ripples break, and wail away againUpon the gathering wave: gaunt headlands loomIn the lone distance of the heaving plain.And now, until the calm, the still stars wane,You wait upon my heart, my heart a tomb.Though I dream, life and dreams are alike vain!Then love me, tell me news of dear death: whomCircle you, but a soul astray, one fainTo leave this close world for death's larger room?

If barren be the promise I desire,The promise that I shall not always goIn living solitariness: break fireOut of the night, and lay me swiftly low!Soft spirits! you have wings to waft me higher,Than touch of each my most familiar woe:Am I unworthy, you should raise me so?If barren be that trust, my dreams inspireOnly despair; my brooding heart must growHeavy with miseries; a mourning quire,To tell the heavy hours, how sad, how slow,Are all their footsteps, of whose sound I tire.

Bright seafire runs about a plunging keelOn vehement nights: and where black danger lies,Gleam the torn breakers. But all days revealDrear dooms for me, nor any nights disguiseTheir menace: never rolls the thunder pealThrough my worn watch, nor lightning past mine eyesLeaps from the blue gloom of its mother skies,One hour alone, but all, while sad stars wheel.This hour, was it a lie, that bade me rise;Some laughing dream, that whispered me to stealInto the sea-sweet night, where the wind cries,And find the comfort, that I cannot feel?

My lord hath gone your way perpetual:Whether you be great spirits of the dead,Or spirits you, that never were in thrallTo perishing bodies, dust-born, dustward led.Sweet shadows! passing by this ocean wall,Tarry to pour some balm upon mine head,Some pity for a woman, who hath wedWith weariness and loneliness, from fallTo fall, from bitter snows to maybloom red:The hayfields hear, the cornlands hear, my call!From weariness toward weariness I tread;And hunger for the end: the end of all.