RUDYARD KIPLING

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The Stolen Child

A Poet To His Beloved

A Prayer For My Daughter

A Prayer For My Son .

Beggar To Beggar Cried

The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland

Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

There lies a leafy island

Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water-rats.

There we've hid our fairy vats

Full of berries,

And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O, human child!

To the woods and waters wild

With a fairy hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than

you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim grey sands with light,

Far off by farthest Rosses

We foot it all the night,

Weaving olden dances,

Mingling hands, and mingling glances,

Till the moon has taken flight;

To and fro we leap,

And chase the frothy bubbles,

While the world is full of troubles.

And is anxious in its sleep.

Come away! O, human child!

To the woods and waters wild,

With a fairy hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than

you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes

From the hills above Glen-Car,

In pools among the rushes,

That scarce could bathe a star,

We seek for slumbering trout,

And whispering in their ears;

We give them evil dreams,

Leaning softly out

From ferns that drop their tears

Of dew on the young streams.

Come! O, human child!

To the woods and waters wild,

With a fairy hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than

you can understand.

Away with us, he's going,

The solemn-eyed;

He'll hear no more the lowin

Of the calves on the warm hill-side.

Or the kettle on the hob

Sing peace into his breast;

Or see the brown mice bob

Round and round the oatmeal chest.

For he comes, the human child,

To the woods and waters wild,

With a fairy hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than

he can understand.

A Poet To His Beloved

I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams,
White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
White woman with numberless dreams,
I bring you my passionate rhyme.

A Prayer For My Daughter

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And-under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.
Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone.
In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wisc.
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

A Prayer For My Son .

Bid a strong ghost stand at the head
That my Michael may sleep sound,
Nor cry, nor turn in the bed
Till his morning meal come round;
And may departing twilight keep
All dread afar till morning's back.
That his mother may not lack
Her fill of sleep.
Bid the ghost have sword in fist:
Some there are, for I avow
Such devilish things exist,
Who have planned his murder, for they know
Of some most haughty deed or thought
That waits upon his future days,
And would through hatred of the bays
Bring that to nought.
Though You can fashion everything
From nothing every day, and teach
The morning stats to sing,
You have lacked articulate speech
To tell Your simplest want, and known,
Wailing upon a woman's knee,
All of that worst ignominy
Of flesh and bone;
And when through all the town there ran
The servants of Your enemy,
A woman and a man,
Unless the Holy Writings lie,
Hurried through the smooth and rough
And through the fertile and waste,
protecting, till the danger past,
With human love.

Beggar To Beggar Cried

"Time to put off the world and go somewhere

And find my health again in the sea air,'