THE BLESSED
by: William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
- UMHAL called out, bending his
head,
- Till Dathi came and stood,
- With a blink in his eyes, at the cave-mouth,
- Between the wind and the wood.
-
- And Cumhal said, bending his knees,
- 'I have come by the windy way
- To gather the half of your blessedness
- And learn to pray when you pray.
-
- I can bring you salmon out of the streams
- And heron out of the skies.'
- But Dathi folded his hands and smiled
- With the secrets of God in his eyes.
-
- And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke
- All manner of blessed souls,
- Women and children, young men with books,
- And old men with croziers and stoles.
-
- 'Praise God and God's Mother, Dathi said,
- 'For God and God's Mother have sent
- The blessedest souls that walk in the world
- To fill your heart with content.'
-
- 'And which is the blessedest,' Cumhal said,
- 'Where all are comely and good?
- Is it these that with golden thuribles
- Are singing about the wood?'
-
- 'My eyes are blinking,' Dathi said,
- 'With the secrets of God half blind,
- But I can see where the wind goes
- And follow the way of the wind;
-
- 'And blessedness goes where the wind goes,
- And when it is gone we are dead;
- I see the blessedest soul in the world
- And he nods a drunken head.
-
- 'O blessedness comes in the night and the day
- And whither the wise heart knows;
- And one has seen in the redness of wine
- The Incorruptible Rose,
-
- 'That drowsily drops faint leaves on him
- And the sweetness of desire,
- While time and the world are ebbing away
- In twilights of dew and of fire.'
"The Blessed" is reprinted
from The Wind Among the Reeds. W.B. Yeats. London: Elkin
Mathews, 1899. |
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POEMS BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS |
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