Moons (from Yeats) - second page

'...It grows late.

Music and love and sleep await,

Where I would be when the white moon climbs,

The red sun falls and the world grows dim.'

...now the moon like a white rose shone

In the pale west, and the sun's rim sank...

...'Men's hearts of old were drops of flame...

Or drops of silver joy that fell

Out of the moon's pale twisted shell;'

...When God shall come from the sea...

And bid the stars drop down from the sky,

And the moon like a pale rose wither away.

'But till the moon has taken all, I wage

War . . . . . . under the skies, ...

Light is man's love, and lighter is man's rage;

His purpose drifts and dies.'

[from 'The Wanderings of Oisin', c. 1889.]

...they that promised to me love

As those that can outlive the moon have known it...

...I shall find a woman,

One of the Ever-living, as I think -

One of the Laughing People -- and she and I

Shall light upon a place in the world's core,

...Until the overburthened moon is dead.

Second Sailor. He has put a sudden darkness over the moon.

First Sailor ... He has caught the crescent moon out of the sky,

And carries it between us.

Forgael ...Listen to that low-laughing string of the moon

And you will recollect my face and voice,

For you have listened to me playing it

These thousand years.

Dectora Is it not true

That you were born a thousand years ago

In islands where the children of Aengus wind

In happy dances under a windy moon...

...I looked upon the moon,

Longing to knead and pull it into shape

That I might lay it on your head as a crown.

[from 'The Shadowy Waters', lines 192-'38, 209--218, 367, 369f, 432f, 469f; c. 1906.]

- page created March 29 1999 (& updated July 19), as a successor to another page. R.H., Webmaster, 'Up Sky' sites.