In
memory of W. B. Yeats
(d.
Jan. 1939)
I
He
disappeared in the dead of winter:
The
brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And
snow disfigured the public statues;
The
mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What
instruments we have agree
The
day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far
from his illness
The
wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The
peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By
mourning tongues
The
death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But
for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An
afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The
provinces of his body revolted,
The
squares of his mind were empty.
Silence
invaded the suburbs,
The
current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now
he is scattered among a hundred cities
And
wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To
find his happiness in another kind of wood
And
be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The
words of a dead man
Are
modified in the guts of the living.
But
in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When
the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And
the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And
each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few
thousand will think of this day
As
one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What
instruments we have agree
The
day of his death was a dark cold day.
II
You
were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The
parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself;
Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now
Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For
poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In
the valley of its saying where executives
Would
never want to tamper, it flows south
From
ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw
towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way
of happening, a mouth.
III
Earth,
receive an honoured guest:
William
Yeats is laid to rest.
Let
the Irish vessel lie
Emptied
of its poetry.
In
the nightmare of the dark
All
the dogs of Europe bark,
And
the living nations wait,
Each
sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual
disgrace
Stares
from every human face,
And
the seas of pity lie
Locked
and frozen in each eye.
Follow,
poet, follow right
To
the bottom of the night,
With
your unconstraining voice
Still
persuade us to rejoice;
With
the farming of a verse
Make
a vineyard of the curse,
Sing
of human unsuccess
In a
rapture of distress;
In
the deserts of the heart
Let
the healing fountain start,
In
the prison of his days
Teach
the free man how to praise.
W. H.
Auden
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