To the Rose upon the rood of time

Red Rose, proud rose, sad Rose of all my days!

Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:

Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;

The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,

Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;

And thine own sadness, whereof stars, grown old

In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea,

Sing in their high and lonely melody.

Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate,

I find under the boughs of love an hate,

In all poor foolish things live a day,

Eternal beauty wandering on her way.

(...)

W.B. Yeats, The Rose (1893)

A responsabilidade começa nos sonhos

WB Yeats

Spilt Milk

We that have done and thought,
That have thought and done,
Must ramble, and thin out
Like milk spilt on a stone.

W. B. Yeats

Three Movements

Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land;
Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand;
What are all those fish that lie gasping on the strand?

W. B. Yeats

Alchemical Rose

When we left the train we still, I found, some way to go, and set out, buttoning our coats about us, for the wind was bitter and violent. Michael Robartes was silent, seeming anxious to leave me to my thoughts; and as we walked between the sea and the rocky side of a great promontory, I realized with a new perfection what a shock had been given to all my habits of thought and of feelings, if indeed some mysterious change had not taken place in the substance of my mind, for the grey waves, plumed with scudding foam, had grown part of a teeming, fantastic inner life, and when Michael Robartes pointed to a square ancient-looking house, with a much smaller and newer building under its lee, set out on the very end of a dilapidated and almost deserted pier, and said it was the temple of the Alchemical Rose, I was possessed with the phantasy that the sea, which kept covering it with showers of white foam, was claiming it as part of some indefinite and passionate life, which had begun to war upon our orderly and careful days, and was about to plunge the world into a night as obscure as that which followed the downfall of the classical world. One part of my mind mocked this phantastic terror, but the other, the part that still lay half plunged in vision, listened to the clash of unknown armies, and shuddered at unimaginable fanaticisms, that hung in those grey leaping waves. W. B. YEATS, Alchemical Rose

13 de Junho de 1865

Time drops in decay,

Like a candle burnt out,

And the mountains and woods

Have their day, have their day;

What one in the rout

Of the fire-born moods

Has fallen away?

William Butler Yeats, The Moods

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

The Falling of the Leaves

Autumn is over the long leaves that love us,
And over the mice in the barley sheaves;
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.

The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

William Butler Yeats

Tudo pode tentar-me

Tudo pode tentar-me a que me afaste deste ofício do verso:
Outrora foi o rosto de uma mulher, ou pior -
As aparentes exigências do meu país regido por tolos;
Agora nada melhor vem à minha mão
Do que este trabalho habitual. Quando jovem,
Não daria um centavo por uma canção
Que o poeta não cantasse de tal maneira
Que parecesse ter uma espada nos seus aposentos;
Mas hoje seria, cumprido fosse o meu desejo,
Mais frio e mudo e surdo que um peixe.

W. B. Yeats
(trad. José A. Baptista)

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false and true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in jou,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face,

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amind a crowd of stars.

W. B. Yeats
(Os pássaros brancos e outros poemas)

O aviador irlandês que intui a morte

(decalcando W.B.Yeats...)

Sei que vou encontrar o meu fim
Algures, nas nuvens altas dos céus
Não combato quem me odeia a mim
Nem defendo nenhum dos meus
Eu sou de Kiltartan Cross
Os meus são os pobres de lá
Não os animaria qualquer fim que fosse
Não mais felizes os tornará
Dever algum ou lei me ordenou fazer
Nenhum estadista ou multidão em clamor
Apenas um impulso solitário, o prazer
me conduziu, nas nuvens, a este horror
Tudo pensei, tudo pressenti
Os anos futuros eram vã sorte
Vão alento aqueles que já vivi
D'equilíbrio com a vida está esta morte.

Um aviador irlandês...

AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES HIS DEATH

I knouw that I shall my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that i fight do not hate,
Those that Iguard i do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My coutrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade my fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

W.B.YEATS, The wild swans at coole (1919)