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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537297" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Two Kings</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">KING EOCHAID came at sundown to a wood<br>Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen<br>He had outridden his war-wasted men<br>That with empounded cattle trod the mire,<br>And where beech-trees had mixed a pale green light<br>With the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a stag<br>Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.<br>Because it stood upon his path and seemed<br>More hands in height than any stag in the world<br>He sat with tightened rein and loosened mouth<br>Upon his trembling horse, then drove the spur;<br>But the stag stooped and ran at him, and passed,<br>Rending the horse's flank. King Eochaid reeled,<br>Then drew his sword to hold its levelled point<br>Against the stag. When horn and steel were met<br>The horn resounded as though it had been silver,<br>A sweet, miraculous, terrifying sound.<br>Horn locked in sword, they tugged and struggled there<br>As though a stag and unicorn were met<br>Among the African Mountains of the Moon,<br>Until at last the double horns, drawn backward,<br>Butted below the single and so pierced<br>The entrails of the horse. Dropping his sword<br>King Eochaid seized the horns in his strong hands<br>And stared into the sea-green eye, and so<br>Hither and thither to and fro they trod<br>Till all the place was beaten into mire.<br>The strong thigh and the agile thigh were met,<br>The hands that gathered up the might of the world,<br>And hoof and horn that had sucked in their speed<br>Amid the elaborate wilderness of the air.<br>Through bush they plunged and over ivied root,<br>And where the stone struck fire, while in the leaves<br>A squirrel whinnied and a bird screamed out;<br>But when at last he forced those sinewy flanks<br>Against a beech-bole, he threw down the beast<br>And knelt above it with drawn knife. On the instant<br>It vanished like a shadow, and a cry<br>So mournful that it seemed the cry of one<br>Who had lost some unimaginable treasure<br>Wandered between the blue and the green leaf<br>And climbed into the air, crumbling away,<br>Till all had seemed a shadow or a vision<br>But for the trodden mire, the pool of blood,<br>The disembowelled horse.<br>King Eochaid ran<br>Toward peopled Tara, nor stood to draw his breath<br>Until he came before the painted wall,<br>The posts of polished yew, circled with bronze,<br>Of the great door; but though the hanging lamps<br>Showed their faint light through the unshuttered windows,<br>Nor door, nor mouth, nor slipper made a noise,<br>Nor on the ancient beaten paths, that wound<br>From well-side or from plough-land, was there noisc;<br>Nor had there been the noise of living thing<br>Before him or behind, but that far off<br>On the horizon edge bellowed the herds.<br>Knowing that silence brings no good to kings,<br>And mocks returning victory, he passed<br>Between the pillars with a beating heart<br>And saw where in the midst of the great hall<br>pale-faced, alone upon a bench, Edain<br>Sat upright with a sword before her feet.<br>Her hands on either side had gripped the bench.<br>Her eyes were cold and steady, her lips tight.<br>Some passion had made her stone. Hearing a foot<br>She started and then knew whose foot it was;<br>But when he thought to take her in his arms<br>She motioned him afar, and rose and spoke:<br>'I have sent among the fields or to the woods<br>The fighting-men and servants of this house,<br>For I would have your judgment upon one<br>Who is self-accused. If she be innocent<br>She would not look in any known man's face<br>Till judgment has been given, and if guilty,<br>Would never look again on known man's face.'<br>And at these words hc paled, as she had paled,<br>Knowing that he should find upon her lips<br>The meaning of that monstrous day.<br>Then she:<br>'You brought me where your brother Ardan sat<br>Always in his one seat, and bid me care him<br>Through that strange illness that had fixed him there.<br>And should he die to heap his burial-mound<br>And catve his name in Ogham.' Eochaid said,<br>'He lives?' 'He lives and is a healthy man.'<br>'While I have him and you it matters little<br>What man you have lost, what evil you have found.'<br>'I bid them make his bed under this roof<br>And carried him his food with my own hands,<br>And so the weeks passed by. But when I said,<br>''What is this trouble?'' he would answer nothing,<br>Though always at my words his trouble grew;<br>And I but asked the more, till he cried out,<br>Weary of many questions: ''There are things<br>That make the heart akin to the dumb stone.''<br>Then I replied, ''Although you hide a secret,<br>Hopeless and dear, or terrible to think on,<br>Speak it, that I may send through the wide world<br>Day after day you question me, and I,<br>Because there is such a storm amid my thoughts<br>I shall be carried in the gust, command,<br>Forbid, beseech and waste my breath.'' Then I:<br>Although the thing that you have hid were evil,<br>The speaking of it could be no great wrong,<br>And evil must it be, if done 'twere worse<br>Than mound and stone that keep all virtue in,<br>And loosen on us dreams that waste our life,<br>Shadows and shows that can but turn the brain.''<br>but finding him still silent I stooped down<br>And whispering that none but he should hear,<br>Said, ''If a woman has put this on you,<br>My men, whether it please her or displease,<br>And though they have to cross the Loughlan waters<br>And take her in the middle of armed men,<br>Shall make her look upon her handiwork,<br>That she may quench the rick she has fired; and though<br>She may have worn silk clothes, or worn a crown,<br>She'II not be proud, knowing within her heart<br>That our sufficient portion of the world<br>Is that we give, although it be brief giving,<br>Happiness to children and to men.''<br>Then he, driven by his thought beyond his thought,<br>And speaking what he would not though he would,<br>Sighed, ''You, even you yourself, could work the cure!''<br>And at those words I rose and I went out<br>And for nine days he had food from other hands,<br>And for nine days my mind went whirling round<br>The one disastrous zodiac, muttering<br>That the immedicable mound's beyond<br>Our questioning, beyond our pity even.<br>But when nine days had gone I stood again<br>Before his chair and bending down my head<br>I bade him go when all his household slept<br>To an old empty woodman's house that's hidden<br>Westward of Tara, among the hazel-trees --<br>For hope would give his limbs the power -- and await<br>A friend that could, he had told her, work his cure<br>And would be no harsh friend.<br>When night had deepened,<br>I groped my way from beech to hazel wood,<br>Found that old house, a sputtering torch within,<br>And stretched out sleeping on a pile of skins<br>Ardan, and though I called to him and tried<br>To Shake him out of sleep, I could not rouse him.<br>I waited till the night was on the turn,<br>Then fearing that some labourer, on his way<br>To plough or pasture-land, might see me there,<br>Went out.<br>Among the ivy-covered rocks,<br>As on the blue light of a sword, a man<br>Who had unnatural majesty, and eyes<br>Like the eyes of some great kite scouring the woods,<br>Stood on my path. Trembling from head to foot<br>I gazed at him like grouse upon a kite;<br>But with a voice that had unnatural music,<br>''A weary wooing and a long,'' he said,<br>''Speaking of love through other lips and looking<br>Under the eyelids of another, for it was my craft<br>That put a passion in the sleeper there,<br>And when I had got my will and drawn you here,<br>Where I may speak to you alone, my craft<br>Sucked up the passion out of him again<br>And left mere sleep. He'll wake when the sun wakes,<br>push out his vigorous limbs and rub his eyes,<br>And wonder what has ailed him these twelve months.''<br>I cowered back upon the wall in terror,<br>But that sweet-sounding voice ran on: ''Woman,<br>I was your husband when you rode the air,<br>Danced in the whirling foam and in the dust,<br>In days you have not kept in memory,<br>Being betrayed into a cradle, and I come<br>That I may claim you as my wife again.''<br>I was no longer terrified -- his voice<br>Had half awakened some old memory --<br>Yet answered him, ''I am King Eochaid's wife<br>And with him have found every happiness<br>Women can find.'' With a most masterful voice,<br>That made the body seem as it were a string<br>Under a bow, he cried, ''What happiness<br>Can lovers have that know their happiness<br>Must end at the dumb stone? But where we build<br>Our sudden palaces in the still air<br>pleasure itself can bring no weariness.<br>Nor can time waste the cheek, nor is there foot<br>That has grown weary of the wandering dance,<br>Nor an unlaughing mouth, but mine that mourns,<br>Among those mouths that sing their sweethearts' praise,<br>Your empty bed.'' ''How should I love,'' I answered,<br>''Were it not that when the dawn has lit my bed<br>And shown my husband sleeping there, I have sighcd,<br>'Your strength and nobleness will pass away'?<br>Or how should love be worth its pains were it not<br>That when he has fallen asleep within my atms,<br>Being wearied out, I love in man the child?<br>What can they know of love that do not know<br>She builds her nest upon a narrow ledge<br>Above a windy precipice?'' Then he:<br>''Seeing that when you come to the deathbed<br>You must return, whether you would or no,<br>This human life blotted from memory,<br>Why must I live some thirty, forty years,<br>Alone with all this useless happiness?''<br>Thereon he seized me in his arms, but I<br>Thrust him away with both my hands and cried,<br>''Never will I believe there is any change<br>Can blot out of my memory this life<br>Sweetened by death, but if I could believe,<br>That were a double hunger in my lips<br>For what is doubly brief.''<br>And now the shape<br>My hands were pressed to vanished suddenly.<br>I staggered, but a beech-tree stayed my fall,<br>And clinging to it I could hear the cocks<br>Crow upon Tara.'<br>King Eochaid bowed his head<br>And thanked her for her kindness to his brother,<br>For that she promised, and for that refused.<br>Thereon the bellowing of the empounded herds<br>Rose round the walls, and through the bronze-ringed door<br>Jostled and shouted those war-wasted men,<br>And in the midst King Eochaid's brother stood,<br>And bade all welcome, being ignorant.</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=537297" data-title="The Two Kings de William Butler Yeats" data-description="KING EOCHAID came at sundown to a wood
Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen
He had outridden his war-wasted men
That with empounded cattle trod the mire,
And where beech-trees had mixed a pale green light
With the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a st..."></div>
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