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W B Yeats – from Selected Poetry
from Fergus and the Druid

Fergus:  This 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 the gathering light

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 chord, 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 away 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!