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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.