The heart of the spring
William Butler Yeats
(1865 - 1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost
figures of 20th century literature.
W. B. Yeats
A very old man, whose face was almost as fleshless as the foot of a
bird, sat meditating upon the rocky shore of the flat and hazel-covered
isle which fills the widest part of the Lough Gill. A russet-faced boy
of seventeen years sat by his side, watching the swallows dipping for
flies in the still water. The old man was dressed in threadbare blue
velvet, and the boy wore a frieze coat and a blue cap, and had about his
neck a rosary of blue beads. Behind the two, and half hidden by trees,
was a little monastery. It had been burned down a long while before by
sacrilegious men of the Queen's party, but had been roofed anew with
rushes by the boy, that the old man might find shelter in his last days.
He had not set his spade, however, into the garden about it, and the
lilies and the roses of the monks had spread out until their confused
luxuriancy met and mingled with the narrowing circle of the fern.
Beyond the lilies and the roses the ferns were so deep that a child
walking among them would be hidden from sight, even though he stood upon
his toes; and beyond the fern rose many hazels and small oak trees.
'Master,' said the boy, 'this long fasting, and the labour of
beckoning after nightfall with your rod of quicken wood to the beings
who dwell in the waters and among the hazels and oak-trees, is too much
for your strength. Rest from all this labour for a little, for your hand
seemed more heavy upon my shoulder and your feet less steady under you
to-day than I have known them. Men say that you are older than the
eagles, and yet you will not seek the rest that belongs to age.'
He spoke in an eager, impulsive way, as though his heart were in the
words and thoughts of the moment; and the old man answered slowly and
deliberately, as though his heart were in distant days and distant
deeds.
'I will tell you why I have not been able to rest,' he said. 'It is
right that you should know, for you have served me faithfully these five
years and more, and even with affection, taking away thereby a little of
the doom of loneliness which always falls upon the wise. Now, too, that
the end of my labour and the triumph of my hopes is at hand, it is the
more needful for you to have this knowledge.'
'Master, do not think that I would question you. It is for me to keep
the fire alight, and the thatch close against the rain, and strong, lest
the wind blow it among the trees; and it is for me to take the heavy
books from the shelves, and to lift from its corner the great painted
roll with the names of the Sidhe, and to possess the while an incurious
and reverent heart, for right well I know that God has made out of His
abundance a separate wisdom for everything which lives, and to do these
things is my wisdom.' 'You are afraid,' said the old man, and his eyes
shone with a momentary anger.
'Sometimes at night,' said the boy, 'when you are reading, with the
rod of quicken wood in your hand, I look out of the door and see, now a
great grey man driving swine among the hazels, and now many little
people in red caps who come out of the lake driving little white cows
before them. I do not fear these little people so much as the grey man;
for, when they come near the house, they milk the cows, and they drink
the frothing milk, and begin to dance; and I know there is good in the
heart that loves dancing; but I fear them for all that.'
'Why,' said the old man, 'do you fear the ancient gods who made the
spears of your father's fathers to be stout in battle, and the little
people who came at night from the depth of the lakes and sang among the
crickets upon their hearths? And in our evil day they still watch over
the loveliness of the earth.
But I must tell you why I have fasted and laboured when others would
sink into the sleep of age, for without your help once more I shall have
fasted and laboured to no good end.
When you have done for me this last thing, you may go and build your
cottage and till your fields, and take some girl to wife, and forget the
ancient gods. I would be-nay, I _will_ be!-like the Ancient Gods of the
land. I read in my youth, in a Hebrew manuscript I found in a Spanish
monastery, that there is a moment after the Sun has entered the Ramand
before he has passed the Lion, which trembles with the Song of the
Immortal Powers, and that whosoever finds this moment and listens to the
Song shall become like the Immortal Powers themselves; I came back to
Ireland and asked the fairy men, and the cow-doctors, if they knew when
this moment was; but though all had heard of it, there was none could
find the moment upon the hour-glass.
So I gave myself to magic, and spent my life in fasting and in labour
that I might bring the Gods and the Fairies to my side; and now at last
one of the Fairies has told me that the moment is at hand. One, who wore
a redcap and whose lips were white with the froth of the new milk,
whispered it into my ear. Tomorrow, a little before the close of the
first hour after dawn, I shall find the moment, and then I will go away
to a southern land and build myself a palace of white marble amid orange
trees, and gather the brave and the beautiful about me, and enter into
the eternal kingdom of my youth. But, that I may hear the whole Song, I
was told by the little fellow with the froth of the new milk on his
lips, that you must bring great masses of green boughs and pile them
about the door and the window of my room; and you must put fresh green
rushes upon the floor, and cover the table and the rushes with the roses
and the lilies of the monks.
You must do this to-night, and in the morning at the end of the first
hour after dawn, you must come and find me.'
'Will you be quite young then?' said the boy.
'I will be as young then as you are, but now I am still old and
tired, and you must help me to my chair and to my books.'
When the boy had left Aengus son of Forbis in his room, and had
lighted the lamp which, by some contrivance of the wizard's, gave forth
a sweet odour as of strange flowers, he went into the wood and began
cutting green boughs from the hazels, and great bundles of rushes from
the western border of the isle, where the small rocks gave place to
gently sloping sand and clay.
It was nightfall before he had cut enough for his purpose, and
well-nigh midnight before he had carried the last bundle to its place,
and gone back for the roses and the lilies. It was one of those warm,
beautiful nights when everything seems carved of precious stones. The
roses he was gathering were like glowing rubies, and the lilies had the
dull lustre of pearl. Everything had taken upon itself the look of
something imperishable, except a glow-worm, whose faint flame burnt on
steadily among the shadows, moving slowly hither and thither, the only
thing that seemed alive. The boy gathered a great armful of roses and
lilies, and thrusting the glow-worm among their pearl and ruby, carried
them into the room, where the old man sat in a half-slumber.
He laid armful after armful upon the floor and above the table, and
then, gently closing the door, threw himself upon his bed of rushes, to
dream of a peaceful manhood with his chosen wife at his side, and the
laughter of children in his ears. At dawn he rose, and went down to the
edge of the lake, taking the hour-glass with him. Gradually the birds
began to sing, and when the last grains of sand were falling, everything
suddenly seemed to overflow with their music.
It was the most beautiful and living moment of the year; one could
listen to the spring's heart beating in it. He got up and went to find
his master. The green boughs filled the door, and he had to make a way
through them.
When he entered the room the sunlight was falling in flickering
circles on floor and walls and table, and everything was full of soft
green shadows. But the old man sat clasping a mass of roses and lilies
in his arms, and with his head sunk upon his breast.
The boy touched him and he did not move. He lifted the hands but they
were quite cold, and they fell heavily.
'It were better for him,' said the lad, 'to have told his beads and
said his prayers like another, and not to have spent his days in seeking
amongst the Immortal Powers what he could have found in his own deeds
and days had he willed.'
He looked at the threadbare blue velvet, and he saw it was covered
with the pollen of the flowers, and while he was looking at it a thrush,
who had alighted among the boughs that were piled against the window,
began to sing. |