Play · 1900 · The Shadowy Waters
To Lady Gregory
I walked among the seven woods of Coole,Shan-walla, where a willow-bordered pondGathers the wild duck from the winter dawn;Shady Kyle-dortha; sunnier Kyle-na-gno,Where many hundred squirrels are as happyAs though they had been hidden by green boughs,Where old age cannot find them; Pairc-na-lea,Where hazel and ash and privet blind the paths;Dim Pairc-na-carraig, where the wild bees flingTheir sudden fragrances on the green air;Dim Pairc-na-tarav, where enchanted eyesHave seen immortal, mild, proud shadows walk;Dim Inchy wood, that hides badger and foxAnd marten-cat, and borders that old woodWise Biddy Early called the wicked wood:Seven odours, seven murmurs, seven woods.I had not eyes like those enchanted eyes,Yet dreamed that beings happier than menMoved round me in the shadows, and at nightMy dreams were cloven by voices and by fires;And the images I have woven in this storyOf Forgael and Dectora and the empty watersMoved round me in the voices and the fires,And more I may not write of, for they that cleaveThe waters of sleep can make a chattering tongueHeavy like stone, their wisdom being half silence.How shall I name you, immortal, mild, proud shadows?I only know that all we know comes from you,And that you come from Eden on flying feet.Is Eden far away, or do you hideFrom human thought, as hares and mice and coneysThat run before the reaping-hook and lieIn the last ridge of the barley? Do our woodsAnd winds and ponds cover more quiet woods,More shining winds, more star-glimmering ponds?Is Eden out of time and out of space?And do you gather about us when pale lightShining on water and fallen among leaves,And winds blowing from flowers, and whirr of feathersAnd the green quiet, have uplifted the heart?
I have made this poem for you, that men may read itBefore they read of Forgael and Dectora,As men in the old times, before the harps began,Poured out wine for the high invisible ones.
September, 1900.
Text: The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, volume II (Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-on-Avon, 1908). Public domain.