NINETEEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN
 
 MANY ingenious lovely things are gone
 That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
 protected from the circle of the moon
 That pitches common things about.  There stood
 Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
 An ancient image made of olive wood –
 And gone are phidias' famous ivories
 And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.
 We too had many pretty toys when young:
 A law indifferent to blame or praise,
 To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong
 Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;
 Public opinion ripening for so long
 We thought it would outlive all future days.
 O what fine thought we had because we thought
 That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
 All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
 And a great army but a showy thing;
 What matter that no cannon had been turned
 Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king
 Thought that unless a little powder burned
 The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting
 And yet it lack all glory; and perchance
 The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.
 Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
 Rides upon sleep:  a drunken soldiery
 Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
 To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;
 The night can sweat with terror as before
 We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
 And planned to bring the world under a rule,
 Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
 He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned
 Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant
 From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand,
 Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent
 On master-work of intellect or hand,
 No honour leave its mighty monument,
 Has but one comfort left:  all triumph would
 But break upon his ghostly solitude.
 But is there any comfort to be found?
 Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
 What more is there to say? That country round
 None dared admit, if Such a thought were his,
 Incendiary or bigot could be found
 To burn that stump on the Acropolis,
 Or break in bits the famous ivories
 Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.
 When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound
 A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth,
 It seemed that a dragon of air
 Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round
 Or hurried them off on its own furious path;
 So the platonic Year
 Whirls out new right and wrong,
 Whirls in the old instead;
 All men are dancers and their tread
 Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.
 III
 Some moralist or mythological poet
 Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
 I am satisfied with that,
 Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
 Before that brief gleam of its life be gone,
 An image of its state;
 The wings half spread for flight,
 The breast thrust out in pride
 Whether to play, or to ride
 Those winds that clamour of approaching night.
 A man in his own secret meditation
 Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made
 In art or politics;
 Some platonist affirms that in the station
 Where we should cast off body and trade
 The ancient habit sticks,
 And that if our works could
 But vanish with our breath
 That were a lucky death,
 For triumph can but mar our solitude.
 The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:
 That image can bring wildness, bring a rage
 To end all things, to end
 What my laborious life imagined, even
 The half-imagined, the half-written page;
 O but we dreamed to mend
 Whatever mischief seemed
 To afflict mankind, but now
 That winds of winter blow
 Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
 We, who seven yeats ago
 Talked of honour and of truth,
 Shriek with pleasure if we show
 The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth.
 Come let us mock at the great
 That had such burdens on the mind
 And toiled so hard and late
 To leave some monument behind,
 Nor thought of the levelling wind.
 Come let us mock at the wise;
 With all those calendars whereon
 They fixed old aching eyes,
 They never saw how seasons run,
 And now but gape at the sun.
 Come let us mock at the good
 That fancied goodness might be gay,
 And sick of solitude
 Might proclaim a holiday:
 Wind shrieked – and where are they?
 Mock mockers after that
 That would not lift a hand maybe
 To help good, wise or great
 To bar that foul storm out, for we
 Traffic in mockery.
 Violence upon the roads:  violence of horses;
 Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded
 On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane,
 But wearied running round and round in their courses
 All break and vanish, and evil gathers head:
 Herodias' daughters have returned again,
 A sudden blast of dusty wind and after
 Thunder of feet, tumult of images,
 Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind;
 And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter
 All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries,
 According to the wind, for all are blind.
 But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon
 There lurches past, his great eyes without thought
 Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks,
 That insolent fiend Robert Artisson
 To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
 Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.