While Michael Angelo’s Sistine roof, His “Morning” and his “Night” disclose How sinew that has been pulled tight, Or it may be loosened in repose, Can rule by supernatural right Yet be but sinew.
I knew that I had seen, had seen at last That girl my unremembering nights hold fast Or else my dreams that fly If I should rub an eye, And yet in flying fling into my meat A crazy juice that makes the pulses beat...
A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there; And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence.
All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay.
The soldier takes pride in saluting his Captain, The devotee proffers a knee to his Lord, Some back a mare thrown from a thoroughbred, Troy backed its Helen, Troy died and adored; Great nations blossom above, A slave bows down to a slave.
My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd. “This Land of Saints,” and then as the applause died out, “Of plaster Saints;” his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.
There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind...
Overcome the Empyrean; hurl Heaven and Earth out of their places, That in the same calamity Brother and brother, friend and friend, Family and family, City and city may contend.
My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day’s war with every knave and dolt, Theater business, management of men.
Who understood Whatever has been said, sighed, sung, Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed...
On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw A 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 play That, it may be, had danced her life away...
Come let us mock at the good That fancied goodness might be gay, And sick of solitude Might proclaim a holiday: Wind shrieked and where are they?
Laughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it, And when the moon’s pot-bellied I get a laughing fit...
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; I hail the superhuman; I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
A drunkard is a dead man And all dead men are drunk.
A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade, Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out. It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad.
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...
Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun...
As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind...
The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day; For half his flock were in their beds, Or under green sods lay.