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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  William Butler Yeats

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Two Kings

William Butler Yeats

“WE ride but slowly though so near our home.”

King Eochaid said, and he that bore his shield

Sighing replied: “What need have we for haste

Towards the hour for speaking of the dead?

My married sister put into my care

A boy of twenty years;—a mound and stone

Between the wood of Duras and Magai

Have been the measure of that care.” But Eochaid,

Having no thought but for his queen Edain,

Outrode his troop that after twelve months’ war

Toiled with empounded cattle through the mire,

And came into a wood as the sun set

Westward of Tara. Where in the middle wood

A clump of beech trees made an empty space

He thought to have given his horse the spur, but saw,

Between the pale-green light of the beech leaves

And the ground ivy’s bluer light, a stag

Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.

Because it stood upon his path and seemed

More hands in height than any stag in the world

He sat with tightened rein amazed, his horse

Trembling beneath him, and then drove the spur

Not doubting to have shouldered it away.

But the stag stooped its heavy branching horns,

And ran at him, and passed, and as it passed

Ripped through the horse’s flanks. King Eochaid reeled,

But drew his sword, and thought with levelled point

To stay the stag’s next rush. When sword met horn

The horn resounded as though it had been silver.

Horn locked in sword, they tugged and struggled there

As though a stag and unicorn were met

In Africa on mountain of the moon,

Until at last the unlocked horn had torn

Through the entrails of the horse. Dropping his sword

Eochaid seized both the horns in his strong hands

And stared into the sea-green eyes, and so

Hither and thither to and fro they trod

Till all the place was beaten into mire.

The strong thigh and the agile thigh were met—

The hands that gathered up the might of the world,

And hoof and horn that had sucked in their speed

Amid the elaborate wilderness of the air.

Through bush they plunged and over ivied root

And where the stone struck fire, while in the leaves

A squirrel whinnied and a bird screamed out;

But when at last he forced those sinewy flanks

Against a beech bole he threw down the beast

And knelt above it with drawn knife. On the instant

It vanished like a shadow, and a cry,

So mournful that it seemed the cry of one

Who had lost some unimaginable treasure,

Wandered between the blue and the green leaf

And climbed into the air, crumbling away

Till all had seemed a shadow or a vision

But for the trodden mire, the pool of blood,

The disembowelled horse. King Eochaid gazed,

And then, as terror-stricken as a child

Who has seen a garden image or twisted tree

In the half light, and runs to its own door

Its terror growing wilder at every foot-fall,

He ran towards the house his fathers built

On peopled Tara, nor stood to draw his breath

Until he came before the painted wall,

The posts of polished yew, circled with bronze,

Of the great door; but though the hanging lamps

Showed their faint light through the unshuttered windows,

Nor door, nor mouth, nor slipper made a noise,

Nor on the ancient beaten paths, that wound

From well side or from plough land, was their noise;

And there had been no sound of living thing

Before him or behind, but that far-off

On the horizon edge bellowed the herds.

Knowing that silence brings no good to kings,

And mocks returning victory, he passed

Between the pillars with a beating heart

And saw where in the midst of the great hall,

Pale-faced, alone upon a bench, his wife

Sat upright with a sword before her feet.

A kind mild woman had she been, who poured

Her beauty as the constellations pour

Their richness through the summer and the spring;

But now she had no mild and no kind look:

Her hands on either side had gripped the bench,

Her eyes were cold and steady, her lips tight.

Some passion had made her stone. Hearing a foot

She started and then knew whose foot it was;

But when he thought to take her in his arms

She motioned him afar, and rose and spoke:

“I have sent out into the fields and woods

The fighting men and servants of this house,

For I would have your judgment upon one

Who is self-accused. If she be innocent

She would not look in any known man’s face

Till judgment has been given, and if guilty,

Because that were a guilt against her king,

Will never look again on known man’s face.”

And at these words he paled, as she had paled,

Knowing that he should find upon her lips

The meaning of that monstrous day.
Then she:

“You brought me where your brother Ardan sat

Always in his one seat, and bid me care him

Through that strange illness that had fixed him there,

And should he die to heap his burial mound

And raise his pillar stone.” King Eochaid said,

Gazing upon her with bewildered eyes:

“If he be living still the whole world’s mine,

But if not living, half the world is lost.”

“I bid them make his bed under this roof,

And carried him his food with my own hands,

And so the weeks passed by. But when I said,

‘What is this trouble?’ he would answer nothing,

Though always at my words his trouble grew.

And I, that I might find and stub it out,

But asked the more until he spoke these words,

Weary of many questions: ‘There are things

That make the heart akin to the dumb stone.’

Then I replied: ‘Although you hide a secret,

Dearer than any that the dumb stone hides,

Speak it, that I may send through the wide world

For medicine.’ Thereon he cried aloud:

‘Day after day you question me, and I,

Because there is such a storm amid my thoughts

I shall be carried in the gust, command

Forbid, beseech and waste my breath.’ Then I:

‘Although the thing that you have hid were evil

The speaking of it could be no great wrong;

And evil must it be, if done ’twere worse

Than mound and stone that keep all virtue in

And loosen on us dreams that waste our life,

Shadows and shows that can but turn the brain.’

But finding him still silent I stooped down,

And, whispering that none but he should hear,

Said: ‘If a woman has put this on you

My men, whether it please her or displease,

And though they have to cross the Loughlan seas

And take her in the middle of armed men,

Shall make her look upon her handiwork

That she may quench the rick she has fired, and though

She may have worn silk clothes, or worn a crown,

She’ll not be proud, knowing within her heart

That our sufficient portion of the world

Is that we give, although it be brief giving

Happiness to children and to men.’

Then he, driven by his thought beyond his thought,

And speaking what he would not though he would,

Sighed: ‘You, even you yourself could work the cure.’

And at those words I rose and I went out

And for nine days he had food from other hands,

And for nine days my mind went whirling round

The one disastrous zodiac, muttering

That the immedicable wound’s beyond

Question of ours, beyond our pity even.

But when nine days had gone I stood again

Before his chair, and bending down my head

Told him, that when Orion rose, and all

The women of his household were asleep,

To go—for hope would give his limbs the power—

To an old empty woodman’s house that’s hidden

Close to a clump of beech trees in the wood

Westward of Tara, there to await a friend

That could, as he had told her, work his cure,

And would be no harsh friend.
“When night had deepened

I groped my way through boughs, and over roots,

Till oak and hazel ceased and beech began,

And found the house, a sputtering torch within,

And, stretched out sleeping on a pile of skins,

Ardan; and though I called to him and tried

To shake him out of sleep I could not rouse him.

I waited till the night was on the turn,

Then fearing that some labourer, on his way

To plough or pasture land, might see me there

Went out.
“Among the ivy-covered rocks,

As on the blue light of a sword, a man

Who had unnatural majesty, and eyes

Like the eyes of some great kite scouring the woods,

Stood on my path. Trembling from hand to foot

I gazed at him like grouse upon a kite,

But with a voice that had unnatural music

‘A weary wooing and a long,’ he said,

‘Speaking of love through other lips and looking

Under an alien eyelid, for it was my craft

That put a passion in the sleeper there,

And when I had got my will and drawn you here,

Where I may speak to you alone, my craft

Sucked up the passion out of him again

And left mere sleep. He’ll wake when the sun wakes,

Push out his vigorous limbs and rub his eyes

And wonder what has ailed him these twelve months.’

I cowered back upon the wall in terror

But that sweet-sounding voice ran on: ‘Woman,

I was your husband when you rode the air,

Danced in the whirling foam and in the dust

In days you have not kept in memory,

Being betrayed into a cradle; and I come

That I may claim you as my wife again.’

I was no longer terrified, his voice

Had half wakened some old memory,

Yet answered him: ‘I am King Eochaid’s wife,

And with him have found every happiness

Women can find.’ With a most burning voice

That made the body seem as it were a string

Under a bow, he cried: ‘What happiness

Can lovers have that know their happiness

Must end at the dumb stone, but where we build

Our sudden palaces in the still air

Pleasure itself can bring no weariness,

Nor can time waste the cheek, nor is there foot

That has grown weary of the whirling dance,

Nor an unlaughing mouth, but mine that mourns,

Among those mouths that sing their sweethearts’ praise,

Your empty bed.’ ‘How should I love,’ I answered,

‘Were it not that when the dawn has lit my bed

And shown my husband sleeping there I have sighed,

‘Your strength and nobleness will pass away.’

Or how should love be worth its pains were it not

That when he has fallen asleep within my arms,

Being wearied out, I love in man the child?

What can they know of love that do not know

She builds her nest upon a narrow ledge

Above a windy precipice?’ Then he:

‘Seeing that when you come to the death-bed

You must return, whether you would or no,

This human life blotted from memory,

Why must I live some thirty, forty years,

Alone with all this useless happiness?’

Thereon he seized me in his arms, but I

Thrust him away with both my hands and cried:

‘Never will I believe there’s any change

Can blot out of my memory this life

Sweetened by death, but if I could believe

That were a double hunger on my lips

For what is doubly brief.’
“But now the shape,

My hands were pressed to, vanished suddenly.

I staggered, but a beech tree stayed my fall,

And clinging to it I could hear the cocks

Crow upon Tara.”
She had fixed her eyes

Upon Kind Eochaid’s face, who lowered his face

And touched her forehead with his lips and said:

“I thank you for your kindness to my brother,

And for the love that you have shown your king,

For that you promised, and for that refused.”

Thereon the bellowing of the empounded herds

Rose round the walls, and through the bronze-ringed door

Jostled and shouted those war-wasted men,

And in the midst King Eochaid’s brother stood.

He’d heard that din on the horizon’s edge

And ridden out to welcome them, and now,

Giving his hand to that man and to this,

Praised their great victories and gave them joy

Of their return to that ancestral house.