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Yeats, W B - The Wanderings of Oisin - Golden the nails of his bird claws, flung loosely along the dim ground
Identifier
000947
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
W B Yeats – Collected Poems
From The Wanderings of Oisin
Golden the nails of his bird claws, flung loosely along the dim ground;
In one was a branch soft shining with bells more many than sighs
In midst of an old man’s bosom; owls ruffling and pacing around
Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes.
And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers; no, not since the world began
In realms where the handsome were many, nor in glamour by demons flung
Have faces alive with such beauty been known to the salt eye of man
Yet weary with passions that faded when the sevenfold seas were young
………
Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the smoke of their dreams
His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came
Then he swayed in his fingers the bell branch, slow dropping a sound in faint streams
Softer than snow flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame
Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth
The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea covered stone
Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth
And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone