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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Old Age Of Queen Maeve</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">A certain poet in outlandish clothes<br>Gathered a crowd in some Byzantine lane,<br>Talked1 of his country and its people, sang<br>To some stringed instrument none there had seen,<br>A wall behind his back, over his head<br>A latticed window. His glance went up at time<br>As though one listened there, and his voice sank<br>Or let its meaning mix into the strings.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">MAEVE the great queen was pacing to and fro,<br>Between the walls covered with beaten bronze,<br>In her high house at Cruachan; the long hearth,<br>Flickering with ash and hazel, but half showed<br>Where the tired horse-boys lay upon the rushes,<br>Or on the benches underneath the walls,<br>In comfortable sleep; all living slept<br>But that great queen, who more than half the night<br>Had paced from door to fire and fire to door.<br>Though now in her old age, in her young age<br>She had been beautiful in that old way<br>That's all but gone; for the proud heart is gone,<br>And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all<br>But Soft beauty and indolent desire.<br>She could have called over the rim of the world<br>Whatever woman's lover had hit her fancy,<br>And yet had been great-bodied and great-limbed,<br>Fashioned to be the mother of strong children;<br>And she'd had lucky eyes and high heart,<br>And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,<br>At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,<br>Sudden and laughing.<br>O unquiet heart,<br>Why do you praise another, praising her,<br>As if there were no tale but your own tale<br>Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound?<br>Have I not bid you tell of that great queen<br>Who has been buried some two thousand years?<br>When night was at its deepest, a wild goose<br>Cried from the porter's lodge, and with long clamour'<br>Shook the ale-horns and shields upon their hooks;<br>But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power<br>Had filled the house with Druid heaviness;<br>And wondering who of the many-changing Sidhe<br>Had come as in the old times to counsel her,<br>Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall, being old,<br>To that small chamber by the outer gate.<br>The porter slept, although he sat upright<br>With still and stony limbs and open eyes.<br>Maeve waited, and when that ear-piercing noise<br>Broke from his parted lips and broke again,<br>She laid a hand on either of his shoulders,<br>And shook him wide awake, and bid him say<br>Who of the wandering many-changing ones<br>Had troubled his sleep. But all he had to say<br>Was that, the air being heavy and the dogs<br>More still than they had been for a good month,<br>He had fallen asleep, and, though he had dreamed nothing,<br>He could remember when he had had fine dreams.<br>It was before the time of the great war<br>Over the White-Horned Bull and the Brown Bull.<br>She turned away; he turned again to sleep<br>That no god troubled now, and, wondering<br>What matters were afoot among the Sidhe,<br>Maeve walked through that great hall, and with a sigh<br>Lifted the curtain of her sleeping-room,<br>Remembering that she too had seemed divine<br>To many thousand eyes, and to her own<br>One that the generations had long waited<br>That work too difficult for mortal hands<br>Might be accomplished, Bunching the curtain up<br>She saw her husband Ailell sleeping there,<br>And thought of days when he'd had a straight body,<br>And of that famous Fergus, Nessa's husband,<br>Who had been the lover of her middle life.<br>Suddenly Ailell spoke out of his sleep,<br>And not with his own voice or a man's voice,<br>But with the burning, live, unshaken voice<br>Of those that, it may be, can never age.<br>He said, 'High Queen of Cruachan and Magh Ai,<br>A king of the Great Plain would speak with you.'<br>And with glad voice Maeve answered him, 'What king<br>Of the far-wandering shadows has come to me,<br>As in the old days when they would come and go<br>About my threshold to counsel and to help?'<br>The parted lips replied, 'I seek your help,<br>For I am Aengus, and I am crossed in love.'<br>'How may a mortal whose life gutters out<br>Help them that wander with hand clasping hand,<br>Their haughty images that cannot wither,<br>For all their beauty's like a hollow dream,<br>Mirrored in streams that neither hail nor rain<br>Nor the cold North has troubled?'<br>He replied,<br>'I am from those rivers and I bid you call<br>The children of the Maines out of sleep,<br>And set them digging under Bual's hill.<br>We shadows, while they uproot his earthy housc,<br>Will overthrow his shadows and carry off<br>Caer, his blue-eyed daughter that I love.<br>I helped your fathers when they built these walls,<br>And I would have your help in my great need,<br>Queen of high Cruachan.'<br>'I obey your will<br>With speedy feet and a most thankful heart:<br>For you have been, O Aengus of the birds,<br>Our giver of good counsel and good luck.'<br>And with a groan, as if the mortal breath<br>Could but awaken sadly upon lips<br>That happier breath had moved, her husband turned<br>Face downward, tossing in a troubled sleep;<br>But Maeve, and not with a slow feeble foot,<br>Came to the threshold of the painted house<br>Where her grandchildren slept, and cried aloud,<br>Until the pillared dark began to stir<br>With shouting and the clang of unhooked arms.<br>She told them of the many-changing ones;<br>And all that night, and all through the next day<br>To middle night, they dug into the hill.<br>At middle night great cats with silver claws,<br>Bodies of shadow and blind eyes like pearls,<br>Came up out of the hole, and red-eared hounds<br>With long white bodies came out of the air<br>Suddenly, and ran at them and harried them.<br>The Maines' children dropped their spades, and stood<br>With quaking joints and terror-stricken faces,<br>Till Maeve called out, 'These are but common men.<br>The Maines' children have not dropped their spades<br>Because Earth, crazy for its broken power,<br>Casts up a Show and the winds answer it<br>With holy shadows.' Her high heart was glad,<br>And when the uproar ran along the grass<br>She followed with light footfall in the midst,<br>Till it died out where an old thorn-tree stood.<br>Friend of these many years, you too had stood<br>With equal courage in that whirling rout;<br>For you, although you've not her wandering heart,<br>Have all that greatness, and not hers alone,<br>For there is no high story about queens<br>In any ancient book but tells of you;<br>And when I've heard how they grew old and died,<br>Or fell into unhappiness, I've said,<br>'She will grow old and die, and she has wept!'<br>And when I'd write it out anew, the words,<br>Half crazy with the thought, She too has wept!<br>Outrun the measure.<br>I'd tell of that great queen<br>Who stood amid a silence by the thorn<br>Until two lovers came out of the air<br>With bodies made out of soft fire. The one,<br>About whose face birds wagged their fiery wings,<br>Said, 'Aengus and his sweetheart give their thanks<br>To Maeve and to Maeve's household, owing all<br>In owing them the bride-bed that gives peace.'<br>Then Maeve: 'O Aengus, Master of all lovers,<br>A thousand years ago you held high ralk<br>With the first kings of many-pillared Cruachan.<br>O when will you grow weary?'<br>They had vanished,<br>But our of the dark air over her head there came<br>A murmur of soft words and meeting lips.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Butler+Yeats">William Butler Yeats</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537253" data-title="The Old Age Of Queen Maeve de William Butler Yeats" data-description="A certain poet in outlandish clothes
Gathered a crowd in some Byzantine lane,
Talked1 of his country and its people, sang
To some stringed instrument none there had seen,
A wall behind his back, over his head
A latticed window. His glance went up ..."></div>
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