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W. B. Yeats
ALL SOULS' NIGHT
(01) 01 : 'Tis All Souls' Night and the great Christ Church bell,
02 : And many a lesser bell, sound through the room,
03 : For it is now midnight;
04 : And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
05 : Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come,
06 : For it is a ghost's right,
07 : His element is so fine
08 : Being sharpened by his death,
09 : To drink from the wine-breath
10 : While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
(02) 11 : I need some mind that, if the cannon sound
12 : From every quarter of the world, can stay
13 : Wound in mind's pondering,
14 : As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;
15 : Because I have a marvellous thing to say,
16 : A certain marvellous thing
17 : None but the living mock,
18 : Though not for sober ear;
19 : It may be all that hear
20 : Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
(03) 21 : H--'s the first I call. He loved strange thought
22 : And knew that sweet extremity of pride
23 : That's called platonic love,
24 : And that to such a pitch of passion wrought
25 : Nothing could bring him, when his lady died,
26 : Anodyne for his love.
27 : Words were but wasted breath;
28 : One dear hope had he:
29 : The inclemency
30 : Of that or the next winter would be death.
(04) 31 : Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell
32 : Whether of her or God he thought the most,
33 : But think that his mind's eye,
34 : When upward turned, on one sole image fell,
35 : And that a slight companionable ghost,
36 : Wild with divinity,
37 : Had so lit up the whole
38 : Immense miraculous house,
39 : The Bible promised us,
40 : It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.
(05) 41 : On Florence Emery I call the next,
42 : Who finding the first wrinkles on a face
43 : Admired and beautiful,
44 : And knowing that the future would be vexed
45 : With 'minished beauty, multiplied commonplace,
46 : Preferred to teach a school,
47 : Away from neighbour or friend
48 : Among dark skins, and there
49 : Permit foul years to wear
50 : Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.
(06) 51 : Before that end much had she ravelled out
52 : From a discourse in figurative speech
53 : By some learned Indian
54 : On the soul's journey. How it is whirled about,
55 : Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,
56 : Until it plunged into the sun;
57 : And there free and yet fast,
58 : Being both Chance and Choice,
59 : Forget its broken toys
60 : And sink into its own delight at last.
(07) 61 : And I call up MacGregor from the grave,
62 : For in my first hard springtime we were friends,
63 : Although of late estranged.
64 : I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,
65 : And told him so, but friendship never ends;
66 : And what if mind seem changed,
67 : And it seem changed with the mind,
68 : When thoughts rise up unbid
69 : On generous things that he did
70 : And I grow half contented to be blind.
(08) 71 : He had much industry at setting out,
72 : Much boisterous courage, before loneliness
73 : Had driven him crazed;
74 : For meditations upon unknown thought
75 : Make human intercourse grow less and less;
76 : They are neither paid nor praised.
77 : But he'd object to the host,
78 : The glass because my glass;
79 : A ghost-lover he was
80 : And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.
(09) 81 : But names are nothing. What matter who it be,
82 : So that his elements have grown so fine
83 : The fume of muscatel
84 : Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy
85 : No living man can drink from the whole wine.
86 : I have mummy truths to tell
87 : Whereat the living mock,
88 : Though not for sober ear,
89 : For maybe all that hear
90 : Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
(10) 91 : Such thought--such thought have I that hold it tight
92 : Till meditation master all its parts,
93 : Nothing can stay my glance
94 : Until that glance run in the world's despite
95 : To where the damned have howled away their hearts,
96 : And where the blessed dance;
97 : Such thought, that in it bound
98 : I need no other thing
99 : Wound in mind's wandering,
100 : As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.