The long-legged moor-hens dive,
Polite meaningless words,
What voice more sweet than hers
Her nights in argument
As a mother names her child
I HAVE met them at close of day
And hens to moor-cocks call;
But lived where motley is worn:
That womans days werespent
All changed, changed utterly:
Now and in time to be,
Eighteenth-century houses.
She rode to harriers?
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Minute by minute they change;
Too long a sacrifice
Was coming into his force;
To murmur name upon name,
Transformed utterly:
And a horse plashes within it;
For all that is done and said.
No, no, not night but death;
Around the fire at the club,
Enchanted to a stone
A terrible beauty is born.
Wherever green is worn,
Changes minute by minute;
For England may keepfaith
Minute by minute they live:
To some who are near my heart,
Hearts with one purpose alone
Bewildered them till they died?
Yet I number him in the song;
The horse that comes from the road.
This man had kept a school
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And thought before I had done
A terrible beauty is born.
Coming with vivid faces
To know they dreamed and are dead;
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
Can make a stone of the heart.
And what if excess of love
And rode our winged horse;
So sensitive his nature seemed,
Or polite meaningless words,
In the casual comedy;
When, young and beautiful,
This other his helper and friend
He might have won fame in the end,
A terrible beauty is born.
And Connolly and Pearse
To trouble the living stream.
From counter or desk among grey
Until her voice grew shrill.
What is it but nightfall?
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Through summer and winter seem
We know their dream; enough
He had done most bitter wrong
O when may it suffice?
MacDonagh and MacBride
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Or have lingered awhile and said
This other man I had dreamed
I write it out in a verse -
Being certain that they and I
Easter, 1916
So daring and sweet his thought.
In ignorant good-will,
I have passed with a nod of the head
On limbs that had run wild.
He, too, has resigned his part
That is Heavens part, our part
The rider, the birds that range
Was it needless death after all?
Are changed, changed utterly:
When sleep at last has come
The stones in the midst of all.
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
To please a companion
