William Butler Yeats - Fergus and the Druid

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> Fergus:

The whole day have I followed in the rocks,

And you have changed and flowed from shape to shape.

First as a raven on whose ancient wings

Scarcely a feather lingered, then you seemed

A weasel moving on from stone to stone,

And now at last you wear a human shape,

A thin grey man half lost in gathering night.

 

Druid:

What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings?

 

Fergus:

This would I say, most wise of living souls:

Young subtle Concobar sat close by me

When I gave judgment, and his words were wise,

And what to me was burden without end,

To him seemed easy, so I laid the crown

Upon his head to cast away my sorrow.

 

Druid:

What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings?

 

Fergus:

A king and proud! and that is my despair.

I feast amid my people on the hill,

And pace the woods, and drive my chariot wheels

In the white border of the murmuring sea;

And still I feel the crown upon my head.

 

Druid:

What would you, Fergus?

 

Fergus:

Be no more a king

But learn the dreaming wisdom that is yours.

 

Druid:

Look on my thin grey hair and hollow cheeks

And on these hands that may not lift the sword,

This body trembling like a wind-blown reed.

No woman's loved me, no man sought my help.

 

Fergus:

A king is but a foolish labourer

Who wastes his blood to be another's dream.

 

Druid:

Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams;

Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.

 

Fergus:

I see my life go drifting like a river

From change to change; I have been many things,

A green drop in the surge, a gleam of light

Upon a sword, a fir-tree on a hill,

An old slave grinding at a heavy quern,

A king sitting upon a chair of gold,

And all these things were wonderful and great;

But now I have grown nothing, knowing all,

Ah! Druid, Druid, how great webs of sorrow

Lay hidden in the small slate-coloured thing!