The unfinished man and his pain

Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;
The finished man among his enemies? --

How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape

The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last

He thinks that shape must be his shape?
And what's the good of an escape

If honour find him in the wintry blast?
I am content to live it all again

And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,

A blind man battering blind men;
Or into that most fecund ditch of all,

The folly that man does
Or must suffer, if he woos

A proud woman not kindred of his soul.
I am content to follow to its source

Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!

When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast

We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,

Everything we look upon is blest.
A FRIEND'S ILLNESS

SICKNESS brought me this
Thought, in that scale of his:

Why should I be dismayed
Though flame had burned the whole

World, as it were a coal,
Now I have seen it weighed

Against a soul?
A MEDITATION IN TIME OF WAR

FOR one throb of the artery,
While on that old grey stone I Sat

Under the old wind-broken tree,
I knew that One is animate,

Mankind inanimate fantasy'.
A POET TO HIS BELOVED

I BRING you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams,

White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,

And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:

White woman with numberless dreams,
I bring you my passionate rhyme.

A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER
ONCE more the storm is howling, and half hid

Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle

But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.

Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed

Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour

And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And-under the arches of the bridge, and scream

In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie

That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,

Out of the murderousinnocence of the sea.
May she be granted beauty and yet not

Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,

Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,

Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy

That chooses right, and never find a friend.
Helen being chosen found life flat and dull

And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,

Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man.

It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat

Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone.
In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;

Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;

Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wisc.

And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,

From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
May she become a flourishing hidden tree

That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round

Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,

Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel

Rooted in one dear perpetual place.
My mind, because the minds that I have loved,

The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,

Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.

If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind

Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.
An intellectualhatred is the worst,

So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born

Out of the mouth of plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind

Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood

For an old bellows full of angry wind?
Considering that, all hatreddriven hence,

The soul recovers radicalinnocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,

Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;

She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl

Or every bellows burst, be happy Still.
And may her bridegroom bring her to a house

Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares

Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony

Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,

And custom for the spreading laurel tree.
A SONG

I THOUGHT no more was needed
Youth to polong

Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.

i{O who could have foretold
That thc heart grows old?}

Though I have many words,
What woman's satisfied,

I am no longer faint
Because at her side?

i{O who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?}

I have not lost desire
But the heart that I had;

I thOught 'twould burn my body
Laid on the death-bed,

i{For who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?}

BAILE AND AILLINN
ARGUMENT. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the

Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land
among the dead, told to each a story of the other's death, so

that their hearts were broken and they died.
I HARDLY hear the curlew cry,

Nor thegrey rush when the wind is high,
Before my thoughts begin to run

On the heir of Uladh, Buan's son,
Baile, who had the honey mouth;

And that mild woman of the south,
Aillinn, who was King Lugaidh's heir.

Their love was never drowned in care
Of this or that thing, nor grew cold

Because their hodies had grown old.
Being forbid to marry on earth,

They blossomed to immortal mirth.>1
About the time when Christ was born,

When the long wars for the White Horn
And the Brown Bull had not yet come,

Young Baile Honey Mouth, whom some
Called rather Baile Little-Land,

Rode out of Emain with a band
Of harpers and young men; and they

Imagined, as they struck the way
To many-pastured Muirthemne,

That all things fell out happily,
And there, for all that fools had said,

Baile and Aillinn would be wed.
They found an old man running there:

He had ragged long grass-coloured hair;
He had knees that stuck out of his hose;

He had puddle-water in his shoes;
He had half a cloak to keep him dry,

Although he had a squirrel's eye.
O wandering hirds and rushy beds,

You put such folly in our heads
With all this crying in the wind,

No common love is to our mind,
And our poor kate or Nan is less

Than any whose unhappiness
Awoke the harp-strings long ago.

Yet they that know all things hut know
That all this life can give us is

A child's laughter, a woman's kiss.
Who was it put so great a scorn

In thegrey reeds that night and morn
Are trodden and broken hy the herds,

And in the light bodies of birds
The north wind tumbles to and fro

And pinches among hail and snow?>1
That runner said: "I am from the south;

• forgive [fə´giv] vt.原谅，谅解，宽恕 (初中英语单词)
• passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
• scream [skri:m] v.&n.尖叫(声) (初中英语单词)
• chiefly [´tʃi:fli] ad.主要地；尤其 (初中英语单词)
• hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
• hatred [´heitrid] n.憎恨，敌意 (初中英语单词)
• driven [´driv(ə)n] drive 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
• forbid [fə´bid] vt.禁止，不许，阻止 (初中英语单词)
• immortal [i´mɔ:təl] a.不死的n.不朽的人物 (初中英语单词)
• christ [kraist] n.基督 int.天啊! (初中英语单词)
• running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
• laughter [´lɑ:ftə] n.笑，笑声 (初中英语单词)
• kindred [´kindrid] n.亲属关系；同源关系 (高中英语单词)
• sweetness [´swi:tnis] n.甜蜜；芳香；亲切 (高中英语单词)
• passionate [´pæʃənit] a.易动情的；易怒的 (高中英语单词)
• innocence [´inəsəns] n.无罪；天真 (高中英语单词)
• courtesy [´kə:tisi] n.礼貌；殷勤；好意 (高中英语单词)
• perpetual [pə´petʃuəl] a.永恒的；终身的 (高中英语单词)
• battery [´bætəri] n.炮兵连；炮台；电池 (高中英语单词)
• intellectual [,inti´lektʃuəl] n.知识分子 (高中英语单词)
• radical [´rædikəl] a.根本的；主要的 (高中英语单词)
• laurel [´lɔrəl] n.月桂树(叶)；桂冠 (高中英语单词)
• ragged [´rægid] a.衣服破烂的 (高中英语单词)
• runner [´rʌnə] n.奔跑者；走私人(船) (高中英语单词)
• unfinished [´ʌn´finiʃt] a.未完成的，未完工的 (英语四级单词)
• meditation [,medi´teiʃən] n.熟虑；默想 (英语四级单词)
• bridge [bridʒ] n.桥(梁)；鼻梁；桥牌 (英语四级单词)
• murderous [´mə:dərəs] a.行凶的；势不可挡的 (英语四级单词)
• merriment [´merimənt] n.欢乐 (英语四级单词)
• bridegroom [´braidgru:m] n.新郎 (英语四级单词)
• malicious [mə´liʃəs] a.恶意的；预谋的 (英语六级单词)
• wintry [´wintri] a.冬天的；荒凉的 (英语六级单词)
• numberless [´nʌmbələs] a.无号码的；数不清的 (英语六级单词)
• arrogance [´ærəgəns] n.傲慢；自大 (英语六级单词)