[
  {
    "title": "The Hosting Of The Sidhe",
    "body": "    The host is riding from Knocknarea\n    And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;\n    Caolte tossing his burning hair\n    And Niamh calling _Away, come away:\n    Empty your heart of its mortal dream.\n    The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,\n    Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,\n    Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,\n    Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;\n    And if any gaze on our rushing band,\n    We come between him and the deed of his hand,\n    We come between him and the hope of his heart_.\n    The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,\n    And where is there hope or deed as fair?\n    Caolte tossing his burning hair,\n    And Niamh calling _Away, come away_.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Everlasting Voices",
    "body": "    O sweet everlasting Voices be still;\n    Go to the guards of the heavenly fold\n    And bid them wander obeying your will\n    Flame under flame, till Time be no more;\n    Have you not heard that our hearts are old,\n    That you call in birds, in wind on the hill,\n    In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore?\n    O sweet everlasting Voices be still.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Moods",
    "body": "    Time drops in decay,\n    Like a candle burnt out,\n    And the mountains and woods\n    Have their day, have their day;\n    What one in the rout\n    Of the fire-born moods,\n    Has fallen away?",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aedh Tells Of The Rose In His Heart",
    "body": "    All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,\n    The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,\n    The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,\n    Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.\n\n    The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;\n    I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,\n    With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold\n    For my dreams of your image that blossoms\n        a rose in the deeps of my heart.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Host Of The Air",
    "body": "    O'Driscoll drove with a song,\n    The wild duck and the drake,\n    From the tall and the tufted reeds\n    Of the drear Hart Lake.\n\n    And he saw how the reeds grew dark\n    At the coming of night tide,\n    And dreamed of the long dim hair\n    Of Bridget his bride.\n\n    He heard while he sang and dreamed\n    A piper piping away,\n    And never was piping so sad,\n    And never was piping so gay.\n\n    And he saw young men and young girls\n    Who danced on a level place\n    And Bridget his bride among them,\n    With a sad and a gay face.\n\n    The dancers crowded about him,\n    And many a sweet thing said,\n    And a young man brought him red wine\n    And a young girl white bread.\n\n    But Bridget drew him by the sleeve,\n    Away from the merry bands,\n    To old men playing at cards\n    With a twinkling of ancient hands.\n\n    The bread and the wine had a doom,\n    For these were the host of the air;\n    He sat and played in a dream\n    Of her long dim hair.\n\n    He played with the merry old men\n    And thought not of evil chance,\n    Until one bore Bridget his bride\n    Away from the merry dance.\n\n    He bore her away in his arms,\n    The handsomest young man there,\n    And his neck and his breast and his arms\n    Were drowned in her long dim hair.\n\n    O'Driscoll scattered the cards\n    And out of his dream awoke:\n    Old men and young men and young girls\n    Were gone like a drifting smoke;\n\n    But he heard high up in the air\n    A piper piping away,\n    And never was piping so sad,\n    And never was piping so gay.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Breasal The Fisherman",
    "body": "    Although you hide in the ebb and flow\n    Of the pale tide when the moon has set,\n    The people of coming days will know\n    About the casting out of my net,\n    And how you have leaped times out of mind\n    Over the little silver cords,\n    And think that you were hard and unkind,\n    And blame you with many bitter words.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Cradle Song",
    "body": "    The Danann children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold,\n    And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes,\n    For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies,\n    With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold:\n    I kiss my wailing child and press it to my breast,\n    And hear the narrow graves calling my child and me.\n    Desolate winds that cry over the wandering sea;\n    Desolate winds that hover in the flaming West;\n    Desolate winds that beat the doors of Heaven, and beat\n    The doors of Hell and blow there many a whimpering ghost;\n    O heart the winds have shaken; the unappeasable host\n    Is comelier than candles before Maurya's feet.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Into The Twilight",
    "body": "    Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,\n    Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;\n    Laugh heart again in the gray twilight,\n    Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.\n\n    Your mother Eire is always young,\n    Dew ever shining and twilight gray;\n    Though hope fall from you and love decay,\n    Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.\n\n    Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:\n    For there the mystical brotherhood\n    Of sun and moon and hollow and wood\n    And river and stream work out their will;\n    And God stands winding His lonely horn,\n    And time and the world are ever in flight;\n    And love is less kind than the gray twilight,\n    And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Song Of Wandering Aengus",
    "body": "    I went out to the hazel wood,\n    Because a fire was in my head,\n    And cut and peeled a hazel wand,\n    And hooked a berry to a thread;\n    And when white moths were on the wing,\n    And moth-like stars were flickering out,\n    I dropped the berry in a stream\n    And caught a little silver trout.\n\n    When I had laid it on the floor\n    I went to blow the fire a-flame,\n    But something rustled on the floor,\n    And someone called me by my name:\n    It had become a glimmering girl\n    With apple blossom in her hair\n    Who called me by my name and ran\n    And faded through the brightening air.\n\n    Though I am old with wandering\n    Through hollow lands and hilly lands,\n    I will find out where she has gone,\n    And kiss her lips and take her hands;\n    And walk among long dappled grass,\n    And pluck till time and times are done,\n    The silver apples of the moon,\n    The golden apples of the sun.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Song Of The Old Mother",
    "body": "    I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow\n    Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;\n    And then I must scrub and bake and sweep\n    Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;\n    And the young lie long and dream in their bed\n    Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,\n    And their day goes over in idleness,\n    And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress:\n    While I must work because I am old,\n    And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Fiddler Of Dooney",
    "body": "    When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,\n    Folk dance like a wave of the sea;\n    My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,\n    My brother in Moharabuiee.\n\n    I passed my brother and cousin:\n    They read in their books of prayer;\n    I read in my book of songs\n    I bought at the Sligo fair.\n\n    When we come at the end of time,\n    To Peter sitting in state,\n    He will smile on the three old spirits,\n    But call me first through the gate;\n\n    For the good are always the merry,\n    Save by an evil chance,\n    And the merry love the fiddle\n    And the merry love to dance:\n\n    And when the folk there spy me,\n    They will all come up to me,\n    With 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!'\n    And dance like a wave of the sea.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Heart Of The Woman",
    "body": "    O what to me the little room\n    That was brimmed up with prayer and rest;\n    He bade me out into the gloom,\n    And my breast lies upon his breast.\n\n    O what to me my mother's care,\n    The house where I was safe and warm;\n    The shadowy blossom of my hair\n    Will hide us from the bitter storm.\n\n    O hiding hair and dewy eyes,\n    I am no more with life and death,\n    My heart upon his warm heart lies,\n    My breath is mixed into his breath.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aedh Laments The Loss Of Love",
    "body": "    Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,\n    I had a beautiful friend\n    And dreamed that the old despair\n    Would end in love in the end:\n    She looked in my heart one day\n    And saw your image was there;\n    She has gone weeping away.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mongan Laments The Change That Has Come Upon Him And His Beloved",
    "body": "    Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns!\n    I have been changed to a hound with one red ear;\n    I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns,\n    For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire and fear\n    Under my feet that they follow you night and day.\n    A man with a hazel wand came without sound;\n    He changed me suddenly; I was looking another way;\n    And now my calling is but the calling of a hound;\n    And Time and Birth and Change are hurrying by.\n    I would that the boar without bristles had come from the West\n    And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky\n    And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Michael Robartes Bids His Beloved Be At Peace",
    "body": "    I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,\n    Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white;\n    The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night,\n    The East her hidden joy before the morning break,\n    The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away,\n    The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire:\n    O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire,\n    The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay:\n    Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat\n    Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,\n    Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,\n    And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hanrahan Reproves The Curlew",
    "body": "    O, curlew, cry no more in the air,\n    Or only to the waters in the West;\n    Because your crying brings to my mind\n    Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair\n    That was shaken out over my breast:\n    There is enough evil in the crying of wind.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Michael Robartes Remembers Forgotten Beauty",
    "body": "    When my arms wrap you round I press\n    My heart upon the loveliness\n    That has long faded from the world;\n    The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled\n    In shadowy pools, when armies fled;\n    The love-tales wove with silken thread\n    By dreaming ladies upon cloth\n    That has made fat the murderous moth;\n    The roses that of old time were\n    Woven by ladies in their hair,\n    The dew-cold lilies ladies bore\n    Through many a sacred corridor\n    Where such gray clouds of incense rose\n    That only the gods' eyes did not close:\n    For that pale breast and lingering hand\n    Come from a more dream-heavy land,\n    A more dream-heavy hour than this;\n    And when you sigh from kiss to kiss\n    I hear white Beauty sighing, too,\n    For hours when all must fade like dew\n    But flame on flame, deep under deep,\n    Throne over throne, where in half sleep\n    Their swords upon their iron knees\n    Brood her high lonely mysteries.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Poet To His Beloved",
    "body": "    I bring you with reverent hands\n    The books of my numberless dreams;\n    White woman that passion has worn\n    As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,\n    And with heart more old than the horn\n    That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:\n    White woman with numberless dreams\n    I bring you my passionate rhyme.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aedh Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes",
    "body": "    Fasten your hair with a golden pin,\n    And bind up every wandering tress;\n    I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:\n    It worked at them, day out, day in,\n    Building a sorrowful loveliness\n    Out of the battles of old times.\n\n    You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,\n    And bind up your long hair and sigh;\n    And all men's hearts must burn and beat;\n    And candle-like foam on the dim sand,\n    And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,\n    Live but to light your passing feet.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "To My Heart, Bidding It Have No Fear",
    "body": "    Be you still, be you still, trembling heart;\n    Remember the wisdom out of the old days:\n    _Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,\n    And the winds that blow through the starry ways,\n    Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood\n    Cover over and hide, for he has no part\n    With the proud, majestical multitude._",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Cap And Bells",
    "body": "    The jester walked in the garden:\n    The garden had fallen still;\n    He bade his soul rise upward\n    And stand on her window-sill.\n\n    It rose in a straight blue garment,\n    When owls began to call:\n    It had grown wise-tongued by thinking\n    Of a quiet and light footfall;\n\n    But the young queen would not listen;\n    She rose in her pale night gown;\n    She drew in the heavy casement\n    And pushed the latches down.\n\n    He bade his heart go to her,\n    When the owls called out no more;\n    In a red and quivering garment\n    It sang to her through the door.\n\n    It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming,\n    Of a flutter of flower-like hair;\n    But she took up her fan from the table\n    And waved it off on the air.\n\n    'I have cap and bells,' he pondered,\n    'I will send them to her and die;'\n    And when the morning whitened\n    He left them where she went by.\n\n    She laid them upon her bosom,\n    Under a cloud of her hair,\n    And her red lips sang them a love song:\n    Till stars grew out of the air.\n\n    She opened her door and her window,\n    And the heart and the soul came through,\n    To her right hand came the red one,\n    To her left hand came the blue.\n\n    They set up a noise like crickets,\n    A chattering wise and sweet,\n    And her hair was a folded flower\n    And the quiet of love in her feet.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Valley Of The Black Pig",
    "body": "    The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears\n    Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,\n    And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries\n    Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.\n    We who still labour by the cromlec on the shore,\n    The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,\n    Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you\n    Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Michael Robartes Asks Forgiveness Because Of His Many Moods",
    "body": "    If this importunate heart trouble your peace\n    With words lighter than air,\n    Or hopes that in mere hoping flicker and cease;\n    Crumple the rose in your hair;\n    And cover your lips with odorous twilight and say,\n    'O Hearts of wind-blown flame!\n    'O Winds, elder than changing of night and day,\n    'That murmuring and longing came,\n    'From marble cities loud with tabors of old\n    'In dove-gray faery lands;\n    'From battle banners fold upon purple fold,\n    'Queens wrought with glimmering hands;\n    'That saw young Niamh hover with love-lorn face\n    'Above the wandering tide;\n    'And lingered in the hidden desolate place,\n    'Where the last Phoenix died\n    'And wrapped the flames above his holy head;\n    'And still murmur and long:\n    'O Piteous Hearts, changing till change be dead\n    'In a tumultuous song:'\n    And cover the pale blossoms of your breast\n    With your dim heavy hair,\n    And trouble with a sigh for all things longing for rest\n    The odorous twilight there.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aedh Tells Of A Valley Full Of Lovers",
    "body": "    I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,\n    For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;\n    And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood\n    With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:\n    I cried in my dream '_O women bid the young men lay\n    'Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair,\n    'Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair\n    'Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away._'",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aedh Tells Of The Perfect Beauty",
    "body": "    O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes\n    The poets labouring all their days\n    To build a perfect beauty in rhyme\n    Are overthrown by a woman's gaze\n    And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:\n    And therefore my heart will bow, when dew\n    Is dropping sleep, until God burn time,\n    Before the unlabouring stars and you.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aedh Hears The Cry Of The Sedge",
    "body": "    I wander by the edge\n    Of this desolate lake\n    Where wind cries in the sedge\n    _Until the axle break\n    That keeps the stars in their round\n    And hands hurl in the deep\n    The banners of East and West\n    And the girdle of light is unbound,\n    Your breast will not lie by the breast\n    Of your beloved in sleep_.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aedh Thinks Of Those Who Have Spoken Evil Of His Beloved",
    "body": "    Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,\n    And dream about the great and their pride;\n    They have spoken against you everywhere,\n    But weigh this song with the great and their pride;\n    I made it out of a mouthful of air,\n    Their children's children shall say they have lied.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Blessed",
    "body": "    Cumhal called out, bending his head,\n    Till Dathi came and stood,\n    With a blink in his eyes at the cave mouth,\n    Between the wind and the wood.\n\n    And Cumhal said, bending his knees,\n    'I have come by the windy way\n    'To gather the half of your blessedness\n    'And learn to pray when you pray.\n\n    'I can bring you salmon out of the streams\n    'And heron out of the skies.'\n    But Dathi folded his hands and smiled\n    With the secrets of God in his eyes.\n\n    And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke\n    All manner of blessed souls,\n    Women and children, young men with books,\n    And old men with croziers and stoles.\n\n    'Praise God and God's mother,' Dathi said,\n    'For God and God's mother have sent\n    'The blessedest souls that walk in the world\n    'To fill your heart with content.'\n\n    'And which is the blessedest,' Cumhal said,\n    'Where all are comely and good?\n    'Is it these that with golden thuribles\n    'Are singing about the wood?'\n\n    'My eyes are blinking,' Dathi said,\n    'With the secrets of God half blind,\n    'But I can see where the wind goes\n    'And follow the way of the wind;\n\n    'And blessedness goes where the wind goes,\n    'And when it is gone we are dead;\n    'I see the blessedest soul in the world\n    'And he nods a drunken head.\n\n    'O blessedness comes in the night and the day\n    'And whither the wise heart knows;\n    'And one has seen in the redness of wine\n    'The Incorruptible Rose,\n\n    'That drowsily drops faint leaves on him\n    'And the sweetness of desire,\n    'While time and the world are ebbing away\n    'In twilights of dew and of fire.'",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Secret Rose",
    "body": "    Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,\n    Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those\n    Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,\n    Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir\n    And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep\n    Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep\n    Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold\n    The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold\n    Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes\n    Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise\n    In druid vapour and make the torches dim;\n    Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him\n    Who met Fand walking among flaming dew\n    By a gray shore where the wind never blew,\n    And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;\n    And him who drove the gods out of their liss,\n    And till a hundred morns had flowered red,\n    Feasted and wept the barrows of his dead;\n    And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown\n    And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown\n    Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;\n    And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,\n    And sought through lands and islands numberless years,\n    Until he found with laughter and with tears,\n    A woman, of so shining loveliness,\n    That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,\n    A little stolen tress. I, too, await\n    The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.\n    When shall the stars be blown about the sky,\n    Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?\n    Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,\n    Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hanrahan Laments Because Of His Wanderings",
    "body": "    O where is our Mother of Peace\n    Nodding her purple hood?\n    For the winds that awakened the stars\n    Are blowing through my blood.\n    I would that the death-pale deer\n    Had come through the mountain side,\n    And trampled the mountain away,\n    And drunk up the murmuring tide;\n    For the winds that awakened the stars\n    Are blowing through my blood,\n    And our Mother of Peace has forgot me\n    Under her purple hood.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Travail Of Passion",
    "body": "    When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide;\n    When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay;\n    Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way\n    Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side,\n    The hyssop-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kidron stream:\n    We will bend down and loosen our hair over you,\n    That it may drop faint perfume, and be heavy with dew,\n    Lilies of death-pale hope, roses of passionate dream.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Poet Pleads With His Friend For Old Friends",
    "body": "    Though you are in your shining days,\n    Voices among the crowd\n    And new friends busy with your praise,\n    Be not unkind or proud,\n    But think about old friends the most:\n    Time's bitter flood will rise,\n    Your beauty perish and be lost\n    For all eyes but these eyes.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hanrahan Speaks To The Lovers Of His Songs In Coming Days",
    "body": "    O, colleens, kneeling by your altar rails long hence,\n    When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,\n    And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air\n    And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense;\n    Bend down and pray for the great sin I wove in song,\n    Till Maurya of the wounded heart cry a sweet cry,\n    And call to my beloved and me: 'No longer fly\n    'Amid the hovering, piteous, penitential throng.'",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aedh Pleads With The Elemental Powers",
    "body": "    The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows\n    Have pulled the Immortal Rose;\n    And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,\n    The Polar Dragon slept,\n    His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:\n    When will he wake from sleep?\n\n    Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,\n    With your harmonious choir\n    Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,\n    That my old care may cease;\n    Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight\n    The nets of day and night.\n\n    Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be\n    Like the pale cup of the sea,\n    When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim\n    Above its cloudy rim;\n    But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow\n    Whither her footsteps go.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aedh Wishes His Beloved Were Dead",
    "body": "    Were you but lying cold and dead,\n    And lights were paling out of the West,\n    You would come hither, and bend your head,\n    And I would lay my head on your breast;\n    And you would murmur tender words,\n    Forgiving me, because you were dead:\n    Nor would you rise and hasten away,\n    Though you have the will of the wild birds,\n    But know your hair was bound and wound\n    About the stars and moon and sun:\n    O would beloved that you lay\n    Under the dock-leaves in the ground,\n    While lights were paling one by one.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aedh Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven",
    "body": "    Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,\n    Enwrought with golden and silver light,\n    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths\n    Of night and light and the half light,\n    I would spread the cloths under your feet:\n    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;\n    I have spread my dreams under your feet;\n    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mongan Thinks Of His Past Greatness",
    "body": "    I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young\n    And weep because I know all things now:\n    I have been a hazel tree and they hung\n    The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough\n    Among my leaves in times out of mind:\n    I became a rush that horses tread:\n    I became a man, a hater of the wind,\n    Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head\n    Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair\n    Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;\n    Although the rushes and the fowl of the air\n    Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.\n\n\n\n\nNOTES",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Hosting Of The Sidhe.",
    "body": "The powerful and wealthy called the gods of ancient Ireland the Tuatha\nDe Danaan, or the Tribes of the goddess Danu, but the poor called them,\nand still sometimes call them, the Sidhe, from Aes Sidhe or Sluagh\nSidhe, the people of the Faery Hills, as these words are usually\nexplained. Sidhe is also Gaelic for wind, and certainly the Sidhe have\nmuch to do with the wind. They journey in whirling winds, the winds that\nwere called the dance of the daughters of Herodias in the Middle Ages,\nHerodias doubtless taking the place of some old goddess. When the\ncountry people see the leaves whirling on the road they bless\nthemselves, because they believe the Sidhe to be passing by. They are\nalmost always said to wear no covering upon their heads, and to let\ntheir hair stream out; and the great among them, for they have great and\nsimple, go much upon horseback. If any one becomes too much interested\nin them, and sees them over much, he loses all interest in ordinary\nthings. I shall write a great deal elsewhere about such enchanted\npersons, and can give but an example or two now.\n\nA woman near Gort, in Galway, says: 'There is a boy, now, of the\nCloran's; but I wouldn't for the world let them think I spoke of him;\nit's two years since he came from America, and since that time he never\nwent to Mass, or to church, or to fairs, or to market, or to stand on\nthe cross roads, or to hurling, or to nothing. And if any one comes into\nthe house, it's into the room he'll slip, not to see them; and as to\nwork, he has the garden dug to bits, and the whole place smeared with\ncow dung; and such a crop as was never seen; and the alders all plaited\ntill they look grand. One day he went as far as the chapel; but as soon\nas he got to the door he turned straight round again, as if he hadn't\npower to pass it. I wonder he wouldn't get the priest to read a Mass for\nhim, or something; but the crop he has is grand, and you may know well\nhe has some to help him.' One hears many stories of the kind; and a man\nwhose son is believed to go out riding among them at night tells me that\nhe is careless about everything, and lies in bed until it is late in the\nday. A doctor believes this boy to be mad. Those that are at times\n'away,' as it is called, know all things, but are afraid to speak. A\ncountryman at Kiltartan says, 'There was one of the Lydons--John--was\naway for seven years, lying in his bed, but brought away at nights, and\nhe knew everything; and one, Kearney, up in the mountains, a cousin of\nhis own, lost two hoggets, and came and told him, and he knew the very\nspot where they were, and told him, and he got them back again. But\n_they_ were vexed at that, and took away the power, so that he never\nknew anything again, no more than another.' This wisdom is the wisdom of\nthe fools of the Celtic stories, that was above all the wisdom of the\nwise. Lomna, the fool of Fiann, had so great wisdom that his head, cut\nfrom his body, was still able to sing and prophesy; and a writer in the\n'Encyclopaedia Britannica' writes that Tristram, in the oldest form of\nthe tale of Tristram and Iseult, drank wisdom, and madness the shadow of\nwisdom, and not love, out of the magic cup.\n\nThe great of the old times are among the Tribes of Danu, and are kings\nand queens among them. Caolte was a companion of Fiann; and years after\nhis death he appeared to a king in a forest, and was a flaming man, that\nhe might lead him in the darkness. When the king asked him who he was,\nhe said, 'I am your candlestick.' I do not remember where I have read\nthis story, and I have, maybe, half forgotten it. Niam was a beautiful\nwoman of the Tribes of Danu, that led Oisin to the Country of the Young,\nas their country is called; I have written about her in 'The Wandering\nof Usheen;' and he came back, at last, to bitterness and weariness.\n\nKnocknarea is in Sligo, and the country people say that Maeve, still a\ngreat queen of the western Sidhe, is buried in the cairn of stones upon\nit. I have written of Clooth-na-Bare in 'The Celtic Twilight.' She 'went\nall over the world, seeking a lake deep enough to drown her faery life,\nof which she had grown weary, leaping from hill to hill, and setting up\na cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted, until, at last, she found\nthe deepest water in the world in little Lough Ia, on the top of the\nbird mountain, in Sligo.' I forget, now, where I heard this story, but\nit may have been from a priest at Collooney. Clooth-na-Bare would mean\nthe old woman of Bare, but is evidently a corruption of Cailleac Bare,\nthe old woman Bare, who, under the names Bare, and Berah, and Beri, and\nVerah, and Dera, and Dhira, appears in the legends of many places. Mr.\nO'Grady found her haunting Lough Liath high up on the top of a mountain\nof the Fews, the Slieve Fuadh, or Slieve G-Cullain of old times, under\nthe name of the Cailleac Buillia. He describes Lough Liath as a desolate\nmoon-shaped lake, with made wells and sunken passages upon its borders,\nand beset by marsh and heather and gray boulders, and closes his\n'Flight of the Eagle' with a long rhapsody upon mountain and lake,\nbecause of the heroic tales and beautiful old myths that have hung about\nthem always. He identifies the Cailleac Buillia with that Meluchra who\npersuaded Fionn to go to her amid the waters of Lough Liath, and so\nchanged him with her enchantments, that, though she had to free him\nbecause of the threats of the Fiana, his hair was ever afterwards as\nwhite as snow. To this day the Tribes of the Goddess Danu that are in\nthe waters beckon to men, and drown them in the waters; and Bare, or\nDhira, or Meluchra, or whatever name one likes the best, is, doubtless,\nthe name of a mistress among them. Meluchra was daughter of Cullain; and\nCullain Mr. O'Grady calls, upon I know not what authority, a form of\nLir, the master of waters. The people of the waters have been in all\nages beautiful and changeable and lascivious, or beautiful and wise and\nlonely, for water is everywhere the signature of the fruitfulness of the\nbody and of the fruitfulness of dreams. The white hair of Fionn may be\nbut another of the troubles of those that come to unearthly wisdom and\nearthly trouble, and the threats and violence of the Fiana against her,\na different form of the threats and violence the country people use, to\nmake the Tribes of Danu give up those that are 'away.' Bare is now often\ncalled an ugly old woman; but Dr. Joyce says that one of her old names\nwas Aebhin, which means beautiful. Aebhen was the goddess of the tribes\nof northern Leinster; and the lover she had made immortal, and who loved\nher perfectly, left her, and put on mortality, to fight among them\nagainst the stranger, and died on the strand of Clontarf.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "'Aedh,' 'Hanrahan' And 'Michael Robartes' In These Poems.",
    "body": "These are personages in 'The Secret Rose;' but, with the exception of\nsome of Hanrahan's and one of Aedh's poems, the poems are not out of\nthat book. I have used them in this book more as principles of the mind\nthan as actual personages. It is probable that only students of the\nmagical tradition will understand me when I say that 'Michael Robartes'\nis fire reflected in water, and that Hanrahan is fire blown by the wind,\nand that Aedh, whose name is not merely the Irish form of Hugh, but the\nIrish for fire, is fire burning by itself. To put it in a different way,\nHanrahan is the simplicity of an imagination too changeable to gather\npermanent possessions, or the adoration of the shepherds; and Michael\nRobartes is the pride of the imagination brooding upon the greatness of\nits possessions, or the adoration of the Magi; while Aedh is the myrrh\nand frankincense that the imagination offers continually before all that\nit loves.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aedh Hears The Cry Of The Sedge.",
    "body": "The Rose has been for many centuries a symbol of spiritual love and\nsupreme beauty. The Count Goblet D'Alviella thinks that it was once a\nsymbol of the sun,--itself a principal symbol of the divine nature, and\nthe symbolic heart of things. The lotus was in some Eastern countries\nimagined blossoming upon the Tree of Life, as the Flower of Life, and is\nthus represented in Assyrian bas-reliefs. Because the Rose, the flower\nsacred to the Virgin Mary, and the flower that Apuleius' adventurer ate,\nwhen he was changed out of the ass's shape and received into the\nfellowship of Isis, is the western Flower of Life, I have imagined it\ngrowing upon the Tree of Life. I once stood beside a man in Ireland when\nhe saw it growing there in a vision, that seemed to have rapt him out of\nhis body. He saw the garden of Eden walled about, and on the top of a\nhigh mountain, as in certain mediaeval diagrams, and after passing the\nTree of Knowledge, on which grew fruit full of troubled faces, and\nthrough whose branches flowed, he was told, sap that was human souls, he\ncame to a tall, dark tree, with little bitter fruits, and was shown a\nkind of stair or ladder going up through the tree, and told to go up;\nand near the top of the tree, a beautiful woman, like the Goddess of\nLife associated with the tree in Assyria, gave him a rose that seemed\nto have been growing upon the tree. One finds the Rose in the Irish\npoets, sometimes as a religious symbol, as in the phrase, 'the Rose of\nFriday,' meaning the Rose of austerity, in a Gaelic poem in Dr. Hyde's\n'Religious Songs of Connacht;' and, I think, as a symbol of woman's\nbeauty in the Gaelic song, 'Roseen Dubh;' and a symbol of Ireland in\nMangan's adaptation of 'Roseen Dubh,' 'My Dark Rosaleen,' and in Mr.\nAubrey de Vere's 'The Little Black Rose.' I do not know any evidence to\nprove whether this symbol came to Ireland with mediaeval Christianity, or\nwhether it has come down from Celtic times. I have read somewhere that a\nstone engraved with a Celtic god, who holds what looks like a rose in\none hand, has been found somewhere in England; but I cannot find the\nreference, though I certainly made a note of it. If the Rose was really\na symbol of Ireland among the Gaelic poets, and if 'Roseen Dubh' is\nreally a political poem, as some think, one may feel pretty certain that\nthe ancient Celts associated the Rose with Eire, or Fotla, or\nBanba--goddesses who gave their names to Ireland--or with some principal\ngod or goddess, for such symbols are not suddenly adopted or invented,\nbut come out of mythology.\n\nI have made the Seven Lights, the constellation of the Bear, lament for\nthe theft of the Rose, and I have made the Dragon, the constellation\nDraco, the guardian of the Rose, because these constellations move about\nthe pole of the heavens, the ancient Tree of Life in many countries, and\nare often associated with the Tree of Life in mythology. It is this Tree\nof Life that I have put into the 'Song of Mongan' under its common Irish\nform of a hazel; and, because it had sometimes the stars for fruit, I\nhave hung upon it 'the Crooked Plough' and the 'Pilot' star, as\nGaelic-speaking Irishmen sometimes call the Bear and the North star. I\nhave made it an axle-tree in 'Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge,' for this\nwas another ancient way of representing it.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Host Of The Air.",
    "body": "Some writers distinguish between the Sluagh Gaoith, the host of the air,\nand Sluagh Sidhe, the host of the Sidhe, and describe the host of the\nair as of a peculiar malignancy. Dr. Joyce says, 'of all the different\nkinds of goblins ... air demons were most dreaded by the people. They\nlived among clouds, and mists, and rocks, and hated the human race with\nthe utmost malignity.' A very old Arann charm, which contains the words\n'Send God, by his strength, between us and the host of the Sidhe,\nbetween us and the host of the air,' seems also to distinguish among\nthem. I am inclined, however, to think that the distinction came in with\nChristianity and its belief about the prince of the air, for the host of\nthe Sidhe, as I have already explained, are closely associated with the\nwind.\n\nThey are said to steal brides just after their marriage, and sometimes\nin a blast of wind. A man in Galway says, 'At Aughanish there were two\ncouples came to the shore to be married, and one of the newly married\nwomen was in the boat with the priest, and they going back to the\nisland; and a sudden blast of wind came, and the priest said some\nblessed words that were able to save himself, but the girl was swept.'\n\nThis woman was drowned; but more often the persons who are taken 'get\nthe touch,' as it is called, and fall into a half dream, and grow\nindifferent to all things, for their true life has gone out of the\nworld, and is among the hills and the forts of the Sidhe. A faery doctor\nhas told me that his wife 'got the touch' at her marriage because there\nwas one of them wanted her; and the way he knew for certain was, that\nwhen he took a pitchfork out of the rafters, and told her it was a\nbroom, she said, 'It is a broom.' She was, the truth is, in the magical\nsleep, to which people have given a new name lately, that makes the\nimagination so passive that it can be moulded by any voice in any world\ninto any shape. A mere likeness of some old woman, or even old animal,\nsome one or some thing the Sidhe have no longer a use for, is believed\nto be left instead of the person who is 'away;' this some one or some\nthing can, it is thought, be driven away by threats, or by violence\n(though I have heard country women say that violence is wrong), which\nperhaps awakes the soul out of the magical sleep. The story in the poem\nis founded on an old Gaelic ballad that was sung and translated for me\nby a woman at Ballisodare in County Sligo; but in the ballad the husband\nfound the keeners keening his wife when he got to his house. She was\n'swept' at once; but the Sidhe are said to value those the most whom\nthey but cast into a half dream, which may last for years, for they need\nthe help of a living person in most of the things they do. There are\nmany stories of people who seem to die and be buried--though the country\npeople will tell you it is but some one or some thing put in their place\nthat dies and is buried--and yet are brought back afterwards. These\ntales are perhaps memories of true awakenings out of the magical sleep,\nmoulded by the imagination, under the influence of a mystical doctrine\nwhich it understands too literally, into the shape of some well-known\ntraditional tale. One does not hear them as one hears the others, from\nthe persons who are 'away,' or from their wives or husbands; and one old\nman, who had often seen the Sidhe, began one of them with 'Maybe it is\nall vanity.'\n\nHere is a tale that a friend of mine heard in the Burren hills, and it\nis a type of all:--\n\n'There was a girl to be married, and she didn't like the man, and she\ncried when the day was coming, and said she wouldn't go along with him.\nAnd the mother said, \"Get into the bed, then, and I'll say that you're\nsick.\" And so she did. And when the man came the mother said to him,\n\"You can't get her, she's sick in the bed.\" And he looked in and said,\n\"That's not my wife that's in the bed, it's some old hag.\" And the\nmother began to cry and to roar. And he went out and got two hampers of\nturf, and made a fire, that they thought he was going to burn the house\ndown. And when the fire was kindled, \"Come out now,\" says he, \"and we'll\nsee who you are, when I'll put you on the fire.\" And when she heard\nthat, she gave one leap, and was out of the house, and they saw, then,\nit was an old hag she was. Well, the man asked the advice of an old\nwoman, and she bid him go to a faery-bush that was near, and he might\nget some word of her. So he went there at night, and saw all sorts of\ngrand people, and they in carriages or riding on horses, and among them\nhe could see the girl he came to look for. So he went again to the old\nwoman, and she said, \"If you can get the three bits of blackthorn out of\nher hair, you'll get her again.\" So that night he went again, and that\ntime he only got hold of a bit of her hair. But the old woman told him\nthat was no use, and that he was put back now, and it might be twelve\nnights before he'd get her. But on the fourth night he got the third bit\nof blackthorn, and he took her, and she came away with him. He never\ntold the mother he had got her; but one day she saw her at a fair, and,\nsays she, \"That's my daughter; I know her by the smile and by the laugh\nof her,\" and she with a shawl about her head. So the husband said,\n\"You're right there, and hard I worked to get her.\" She spoke often of\nthe grand things she saw underground, and how she used to have wine to\ndrink, and to drive out in a carriage with four horses every night. And\nshe used to be able to see her husband when he came to look for her, and\nshe was greatly afraid he'd get a drop of the wine, for then he would\nhave come underground and never left it again. And she was glad herself\nto come to earth again, and not to be left there.'\n\nThe old Gaelic literature is full of the appeals of the Tribes of the\ngoddess Danu to mortals whom they would bring into their country; but\nthe song of Midher to the beautiful Etain, the wife of the king who was\ncalled Echaid the ploughman, is the type of all.\n\n'O beautiful woman, come with me to the marvellous land where one\nlistens to a sweet music, where one has spring flowers in one's hair,\nwhere the body is like snow from head to foot, where no one is sad or\nsilent, where teeth are white and eyebrows are black ... cheeks red like\nfoxglove in flower.... Ireland is beautiful, but not so beautiful as the\nGreat Plain I call you to. The beer of Ireland is heady, but the beer of\nthe Great Plain is much more heady. How marvellous is the country I am\nspeaking of! Youth does not grow old there. Streams with warm flood flow\nthere; sometimes mead, sometimes wine. Men are charming and without a\nblot there, and love is not forbidden there. O woman, when you come into\nmy powerful country you will wear a crown of gold upon your head. I will\ngive you the flesh of swine, and you will have beer and milk to drink, O\nbeautiful woman. O beautiful woman, come with me!'",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Michael Robartes Asks Forgiveness Because Of His Many Moods.",
    "body": "I use the wind as a symbol of vague desires and hopes, not merely\nbecause the Sidhe are in the wind, or because the wind bloweth as it\nlisteth, but because wind and spirit and vague desire have been\nassociated everywhere. A highland scholar tells me that his country\npeople use the wind in their talk and in their proverbs as I use it in\nmy poem.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Song Of Wandering Aengus.",
    "body": "The Tribes of the goddess Danu can take all shapes, and those that are\nin the waters take often the shape of fish. A woman of Burren, in\nGalway, says, 'There are more of them in the sea than on the land, and\nthey sometimes try to come over the side of the boat in the form of\nfishes, for they can take their choice shape.' At other times they are\nbeautiful women; and another Galway woman says, 'Surely those things are\nin the sea as well as on land. My father was out fishing one night off\nTyrone. And something came beside the boat that had eyes shining like\ncandles. And then a wave came in, and a storm rose all in a minute, and\nwhatever was in the wave, the weight of it had like to sink the boat.\nAnd then they saw that it was a woman in the sea that had the shining\neyes. So my father went to the priest, and he bid him always to take a\ndrop of holy water and a pinch of salt out in the boat with him, and\nnothing could harm him.'\n\nThe poem was suggested to me by a Greek folk song; but the folk belief\nof Greece is very like that of Ireland, and I certainly thought, when I\nwrote it, of Ireland, and of the spirits that are in Ireland. An old man\nwho was cutting a quickset hedge near Gort, in Galway, said, only the\nother day, 'One time I was cutting timber over in Inchy, and about eight\no'clock one morning, when I got there, I saw a girl picking nuts, with\nher hair hanging down over her shoulders; brown hair; and she had a\ngood, clean face, and she was tall, and nothing on her head, and her\ndress no way gaudy, but simple. And when she felt me coming she gathered\nherself up, and was gone, as if the earth had swallowed her up. And I\nfollowed her, and looked for her, but I never could see her again from\nthat day to this, never again.'\n\nThe county Galway people use the word 'clean' in its old sense of fresh\nand comely.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Michael Robartes Bids His Beloved Be At Peace.",
    "body": "November, the old beginning of winter, or of the victory of the Fomor,\nor powers of death, and dismay, and cold, and darkness, is associated by\nthe Irish people with the horse-shaped Pucas, who are now mischievous\nspirits, but were once Fomorian divinities. I think that they may have\nsome connection with the horses of Mannannan, who reigned over the\ncountry of the dead, where the Fomorian Tethra reigned also; and the\nhorses of Mannannan, though they could cross the land as easily as the\nsea, are constantly associated with the waves. Some neo-platonist, I\nforget who, describes the sea as a symbol of the drifting indefinite\nbitterness of life, and I believe there is like symbolism intended in\nthe many Irish voyages to the islands of enchantment, or that there was,\nat any rate, in the mythology out of which these stories have been\nshaped. I follow much Irish and other mythology, and the magical\ntradition, in associating the North with night and sleep, and the East,\nthe place of sunrise, with hope, and the South, the place of the sun\nwhen at its height, with passion and desire, and the West, the place of\nsunset, with fading and dreaming things.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hanrahan Laments Because Of His Wanderings.",
    "body": "My deer and hound are properly related to the deer and hound that\nflicker in and out of the various tellings of the Arthurian legends,\nleading different knights upon adventures, and to the hounds and to the\nhornless deer at the beginning of, I think, all tellings of Oisin's\njourney to the country of the young. The hound is certainly related to\nthe Hounds of Annwvyn or of Hades, who are white, and have red ears, and\nwere heard, and are, perhaps, still heard by Welsh peasants following\nsome flying thing in the night winds; and is probably related to the\nhounds that Irish country people believe will awake and seize the souls\nof the dead if you lament them too loudly or too soon, and to the hound\nthe son of Setanta killed, on what was certainly, in the first form of\nthe tale, a visit to the Celtic Hades. An old woman told a friend and\nmyself that she saw what she thought were white birds, flying over an\nenchanted place, but found, when she got near, that they had dog's\nheads; and I do not doubt that my hound and these dog-headed birds are\nof the same family. I got my hound and deer out of a last century Gaelic\npoem about Oisin's journey to the country of the young. After the\nhunting of the hornless deer, that leads him to the seashore, and while\nhe is riding over the sea with Niam, he sees amid the waters--I have not\nthe Gaelic poem by me, and describe it from memory--a young man\nfollowing a girl who has a golden apple, and afterwards a hound with one\nred ear following a deer with no horns. This hound and this deer seem\nplain images of the desire of man 'which is for the woman,' and 'the\ndesire of the woman which is for the desire of the man,' and of all\ndesires that are as these. I have read them in this way in 'The\nWanderings of Usheen' or Oisin, and have made my lover sigh because he\nhas seen in their faces 'the immortal desire of immortals.' A solar\nmythologist would perhaps say that the girl with the golden apple was\nonce the winter, or night, carrying the sun away, and the deer without\nhorns, like the boar without bristles, darkness flying the light. He\nwould certainly, I think, say that when Cuchullain, whom Professor Rhys\ncalls a solar hero, hunted the enchanted deer of Slieve Fuadh, because\nthe battle fury was still on him, he was the sun pursuing clouds, or\ncold, or darkness. I have understood them in this sense in 'Hanrahan\nlaments because of his wandering,' and made Hanrahan long for the day\nwhen they, fragments of ancestral darkness, will overthrow the world.\nThe desire of the woman, the flying darkness, it is all one! The\nimage--a cross, a man preaching in the wilderness, a dancing Salome, a\nlily in a girl's hand, a flame leaping, a globe with wings, a pale\nsunset over still waters--is an eternal act; but our understandings are\ntemporal and understand but a little at a time.\n\nThe man in my poem who has a hazel wand may have been Aengus, Master of\nLove; and I have made the boar without bristles come out of the West,\nbecause the place of sunset was in Ireland, as in other countries, a\nplace of symbolic darkness and death.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Cap And Bells.",
    "body": "I dreamed this story exactly as I have written it, and dreamed another\nlong dream after it, trying to make out its meaning, and whether I was\nto write it in prose or verse. The first dream was more a vision than a\ndream, for it was beautiful and coherent, and gave me the sense of\nillumination and exaltation that one gets from visions, while the second\ndream was confused and meaningless. The poem has always meant a great\ndeal to me, though, as is the way with symbolic poems, it has not always\nmeant quite the same thing. Blake would have said 'the authors are in\neternity,' and I am quite sure they can only be questioned in dreams.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Valley Of The Black Pig.",
    "body": "All over Ireland there are prophecies of the coming rout of the enemies\nof Ireland, in a certain Valley of the Black Pig, and these prophecies\nare, no doubt, now, as they were in the Fenian days, a political force.\nI have heard of one man who would not give any money to the Land League,\nbecause the Battle could not be until the close of the century; but, as\na rule, periods of trouble bring prophecies of its near coming. A few\nyears before my time, an old man who lived at Lisadell, in Sligo, used\nto fall down in a fit and rave out descriptions of the Battle; and a man\nin Sligo has told me that it will be so great a battle that the horses\nshall go up to their fetlocks in blood, and that their girths, when it\nis over, will rot from their bellies for lack of a hand to unbuckle\nthem. The battle is a mythological battle, and the black pig is one with\nthe bristleless boar, that killed Dearmod, in November, upon the western\nend of Ben Bulben; Misroide MacDatha's sow, whose carving brought on so\ngreat a battle; 'the croppy black sow,' and 'the cutty black sow' of\nWelsh November rhymes ('Celtic Heathendom,' pages 509-516); the boar\nthat killed Adonis; the boar that killed Attis; and the pig embodiment\nof Typhon ('Golden Bough,' II. pages 26, 31). The pig seems to have been\noriginally a genius of the corn, and, seemingly because the too great\npower of their divinity makes divine things dangerous to mortals, its\nflesh was forbidden to many eastern nations; but as the meaning of the\nprohibition was forgotten, abhorrence took the place of reverence, pigs\nand boars grew into types of evil, and were described as the enemies of\nthe very gods they once typified ('Golden Bough,' II. 26-31, 56-57). The\nPig would, therefore, become the Black Pig, a type of cold and of winter\nthat awake in November, the old beginning of winter, to do battle with\nthe summer, and with the fruit and leaves, and finally, as I suggest;\nand as I believe, for the purposes of poetry; of the darkness that will\nat last destroy the gods and the world. The country people say there is\nno shape for a spirit to take so dangerous as the shape of a pig; and a\nGalway blacksmith--and blacksmiths are thought to be especially\nprotected--says he would be afraid to meet a pig on the road at night;\nand another Galway man tells this story: 'There was a man coming the\nroad from Gort to Garryland one night, and he had a drop taken; and\nbefore him, on the road, he saw a pig walking; and having a drop in, he\ngave a shout, and made a kick at it, and bid it get out of that. And by\nthe time he got home, his arm was swelled from the shoulder to be as big\nas a bag, and he couldn't use his hand with the pain of it. And his wife\nbrought him, after a few days, to a woman that used to do cures at\nRahasane. And on the road all she could do would hardly keep him from\nlying down to sleep on the grass. And when they got to the woman she\nknew all that happened; and, says she, it's well for you that your wife\ndidn't let you fall asleep on the grass, for if you had done that but\neven for one instant, you'd be a lost man.'\n\nIt is possible that bristles were associated with fertility, as the tail\ncertainly was, for a pig's tail is stuck into the ground in Courland,\nthat the corn may grow abundantly, and the tails of pigs, and other\nanimal embodiments of the corn genius, are dragged over the ground to\nmake it fertile in different countries. Professor Rhys, who considers\nthe bristleless boar a symbol of darkness and cold, rather than of\nwinter and cold, thinks it was without bristles because the darkness is\nshorn away by the sun. It may have had different meanings, just as the\nscourging of the man-god has had different though not contradictory\nmeanings in different epochs of the world.\n\nThe Battle should, I believe, be compared with three other battles; a\nbattle the Sidhe are said to fight when a person is being taken away by\nthem; a battle they are said to fight in November for the harvest; the\ngreat battle the Tribes of the goddess Danu fought, according to the\nGaelic chroniclers, with the Fomor at Moy Tura, or the Towery Plain.\n\nI have heard of the battle over the dying both in County Galway and in\nthe Isles of Arann, an old Arann fisherman having told me that it was\nfought over two of his children, and that he found blood in a box he had\nfor keeping fish, when it was over; and I have written about it, and\ngiven examples elsewhere. A faery doctor, on the borders of Galway and\nClare, explained it as a battle between the friends and enemies of the\ndying, the one party trying to take them, the other trying to save them\nfrom being taken. It may once, when the land of the Sidhe was the only\nother world, and when every man who died was carried thither, have\nalways accompanied death. I suggest that the battle between the Tribes\nof the goddess Danu, the powers of light, and warmth, and fruitfulness,\nand goodness, and the Fomor, the powers of darkness, and cold, and\nbarrenness, and badness upon the Towery Plain, was the establishment of\nthe habitable world, the rout of the ancestral darkness; that the battle\namong the Sidhe for the harvest is the annual battle of summer and\nwinter; that the battle among the Sidhe at a man's death is the battle\nof life and death; and that the battle of the Black Pig is the battle\nbetween the manifest world and the ancestral darkness at the end of all\nthings; and that all these battles are one, the battle of all things\nwith shadowy decay. Once a symbolism has possessed the imagination of\nlarge numbers of men, it becomes, as I believe, an embodiment of\ndisembodied powers, and repeats itself in dreams and visions, age after\nage.",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Secret Rose.",
    "body": "I find that I have unintentionally changed the old story of Conchobar's\ndeath. He did not see the crucifixion in a vision, but was told about\nit. He had been struck by a ball, made of the dried brain of a dead\nenemy, and hurled out of a sling; and this ball had been left in his\nhead, and his head had been mended, the Book of Leinster says, with\nthread of gold because his hair was like gold. Keating, a writer of the\ntime of Elizabeth, says, 'In that state did he remain seven years, until\nthe Friday on which Christ was crucified, according to some historians;\nand when he saw the unusual changes of the creation and the eclipse of\nthe sun and the moon at its full, he asked of Bucrach, a Leinster\nDruid, who was along with him, what was it that brought that unusual\nchange upon the planets of Heaven and Earth. \"Jesus Christ, the son of\nGod,\" said the Druid, \"who is now being crucified by the Jews.\" \"That is\na pity,\" said Conchobar; \"were I in his presence I would kill those who\nwere putting him to death.\" And with that he brought out his sword, and\nrushed at a woody grove which was convenient to him, and began to cut\nand fell it; and what he said was, that if he were among the Jews that\nwas the usage he would give them, and from the excessiveness of his fury\nwhich seized upon him, the ball started out of his head, and some of the\nbrain came after it, and in that way he died. The wood of Lanshraigh, in\nFeara Rois, is the name by which that shrubby wood is called.'\n\nI have imagined Cuchullain meeting Fand 'walking among flaming dew.' The\nstory of their love is one of the most beautiful of our old tales. Two\nbirds, bound one to another with a chain of gold, came to a lake side\nwhere Cuchullain and the host of Uladh was encamped, and sang so sweetly\nthat all the host fell into a magic sleep. Presently they took the shape\nof two beautiful women, and cast a magical weakness upon Cuchullain, in\nwhich he lay for a year. At the year's end an Aengus, who was probably\nAengus the master of love, one of the greatest of the children of the\ngoddess Danu, came and sat upon his bedside, and sang how Fand, the wife\nof Mannannan, the master of the sea, and of the islands of the dead,\nloved him; and that if he would come into the country of the gods, where\nthere was wine and gold and silver, Fand, and Laban her sister, would\nheal him of his magical weakness. Cuchullain went to the country of the\ngods, and, after being for a month the lover of Fand, made her a\npromise to meet her at a place called 'the Yew at the Strand's End,' and\ncame back to the earth. Emer, his mortal wife, won his love again, and\nMannannan came to 'the Yew at the Strand's End,' and carried Fand away.\nWhen Cuchullain saw her going, his love for her fell upon him again, and\nhe went mad, and wandered among the mountains without food or drink,\nuntil he was at last cured by a Druid drink of forgetfulness.\n\nI have founded the man 'who drove the gods out of their Liss,' or fort,\nupon something I have read about Caolte after the battle of Gabra, when\nalmost all his companions were killed, driving the gods out of their\nLiss, either at Osraighe, now Ossory, or at Eas Ruaidh, now Asseroe, a\nwaterfall at Ballyshannon, where Ilbreac, one of the children of the\ngoddess Danu, had a Liss. I am writing away from most of my books, and\nhave not been able to find the passage; but I certainly read it\nsomewhere.\n\nI have founded 'the proud dreaming king' upon Fergus, the son of Roigh,\nthe legendary poet of 'the quest of the bull of Cualge,' as he is in the\nancient story of Deirdre, and in modern poems by Ferguson. He married\nNessa, and Ferguson makes him tell how she took him 'captive in a single\nlook.'\n\n    'I am but an empty shade,\n     Far from life and passion laid;\n     Yet does sweet remembrance thrill\n     All my shadowy being still.'\n\nPresently, because of his great love, he gave up his throne to\nConchobar, her son by another, and lived out his days feasting, and\nfighting, and hunting. His promise never to refuse a feast from a\ncertain comrade, and the mischief that came by his promise, and the\nvengeance he took afterwards, are a principal theme of the poets. I\nhave explained my imagination of him in 'Fergus and the Druid,' and in a\nlittle song in the second act of 'The Countess Kathleen.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have founded him 'who sold tillage, and house, and goods,' upon\nsomething in 'The Red Pony,' a folk tale in Mr. Larminie's 'West Irish\nFolk Tales.' A young man 'saw a light before him on the high road. When\nhe came as far, there was an open box on the road, and a light coming up\nout of it. He took up the box. There was a lock of hair in it. Presently\nhe had to go to become the servant of a king for his living. There were\neleven boys. When they were going out into the stable at ten o'clock,\neach of them took a light but he. He took no candle at all with him.\nEach of them went into his own stable. When he went into his stable he\nopened the box. He left it in a hole in the wall. The light was great.\nIt was twice as much as in the other stables.' The king hears of it, and\nmakes him show him the box. The king says, 'You must go and bring me the\nwoman to whom the hair belongs.' In the end, the young man, and not the\nking, marries the woman.\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of Project Gutenberg's The Wind Among the Reeds, by William Butler Yeats",
    "author": "W.B. Yeats",
    "source": "The Wind Among the Reeds",
    "period": "1899"
  }
]