Daughters of the Swan

Leda and the Swan

—Painting by Gustave Moreau
 

WHAT THEN?

—William Butler Yeats

His chosen comrades thought at school

He must grow a famous man;

He thought the same and lived by rule,

All his twenties crammed with toil;

'What then?' sang Plato's ghost, 'what then?'

Everything he wrote was read,

After certain years he won

Sufficient money for his need,

Friends that have been friends indeed;

'What then?' sang Plato's ghost, 'what then?'

All his happier dreams came true—

A small old house, wife, daughter, son,

Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,

Poets and Wits about him drew;

'What then?' sang Plato's ghost, 'what then?'

'The work is done,' grown old he thought,

'According to my boyish plan;

Let the fools rage, I swerved in nought,

Something to perfection brought;'

But louder sang that ghost, 'What then?'

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THE CHOICE

—William Butler Yeats

The intellect of man is forced to choose

Perfection of the life, or of the work,

And if it take the second must refuse

A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:

That old perplexity an empty purse,

Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

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LEDA AND THE SWAN

—William Butler Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

                                  Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

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AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN
—William Butler Yeats

I

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;

A kind old nun in a white hood replies;

The children learn to cipher and to sing,

To study reading-books and history,

To cut and sew, be neat in everything

In the best modern way—the children's eyes

In momentary wonder stare upon

A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

II

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent

Above a sinking fire, a tale that she

Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event

That changed some childish day to tragedy—

Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent

Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,

Or else, to alter Plato's parable,

In the yolk and white of the one shell.

III

And thinking of that fit of grief or rage

I look upon one child or t'other there

And wonder if she stood so at that age—
For even daughters of the swan can share

Something of every paddler's heritage—
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,

And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.

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Today we have something completely different—Yeats and Leda. There are plenty of references out there, but you can start with en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leda_and_the_Swan

The first Crossroads Reading Series with Victoria Dalkey and Julia Connor is now available online at www.ccasac.org

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Today's LittleNip: 

A PRAYER FOR OLD AGE
—William Butler Yeats

God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone;

From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am I that I should not seem
For the song's sake a fool?

I pray—for fashion's word is out
And prayer comes round again—
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man.

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—Medusa