O but we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not..

While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling pot?
You say that we should still the land
Till Germany's overcome..
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is their logic to outweigh
MacDonagh's bony thumb?

How could you dream they'd listen
That have an ear alone
For those new comrades they have found,
Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone..

Or meddle with our give and take
That converse bone to bone?

ON WOMAN

May God be praised for woman
That gives up all her mind,
A man may find in no man
A friendship of her kind..

That covers all he has brought
As with her flesh and bone,
Nor quarrels with a thought
Because it is not her own.

Though pedantry denies,
It's plain the Bible means
That Solomon grew wise
While talking with his queens.

Yet never could, although
They say he counted grass,
Count all the praises due
When Sheba was his lass..

When she the iron wrought, or
When from the smithy fire
It shuddered in the water..
Harshness of their desire..

That made them stretch and yawn,
pleasure that comes with sleep,
Shudder that made them one.

What else He give or keep
God grant me.. no, not here,
For I am not so bold
To hope a thing so dear
Now I am growing old..

But when, if the tale's true,
The Pestle of the moon
That pounds up all anew
Brings me to birth again..

To find what once I had
And know what once I have known,
Until I am driven mad,
Sleep driven from my bed.
By tenderness and care..

pity, an aching head,
Gnashing of teeth, despair
And all because of some one
perverse creature of chance..

And live like Solomon
That Sheba led a dance.

PRESENCES

This night has been so strange that it seemed
As if the hair stood up on my head.
From going-down of the sun I have dreamed
That women laughing, or timid or wild,
In rustle of lace or silken stuff,
Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read
All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing
Returned and yet unrequited love.

They stood in the door and stood between
My great wood lectern and the fire
Till I could hear their hearts beating..
One is a harlot, and one a child
That never looked upon man with desire..
And one, it may be, a queen.

NEVER GIVE ALL THE HEART

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream..

That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy. Kind delight.

O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.

And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?..

He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

THE COLD HEAVEN

Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season..

With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,
Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,
Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken..

Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
By the injustice of the skies for punishment?..

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS