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W. B. Yeats
THE
WILD SWANS AT COOLE
The
trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are
dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still
sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are
nine-and-fifty swans.
The
nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I
first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All
suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon
their clamorous wings.
I
have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is
sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first
time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my
head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied
still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable
streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion
or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But
now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among
what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight
men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
BROKEN
DREAMS
There
is grey in your hair.
Young men no longer suddenly catch their
breath
When you are passing;
But maybe some old gaffer mutters
a blessing
Because it was your prayer
Recovered him upon the
bed of death.
For your sole sake – that all heart’s ache have
known,
And given to others all heart’s ache,
From meagre
girlhood’s putting on
Burdensome beauty – for your sole
sake
Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,
So great her
portion in that peace you make
By merely walking in a room.
Your
beauty can but leave among us
Vague memories, nothing but
memories.
A young man when the old men are done talking
Will
say to an old man, ‘Tell me of that lady
The poet stubborn with
his passion sang us
When age might well have chilled his blood.’
Vague
memories, nothing but memories,
But in the grave all, all shall be
renewed.
The certainty that I shall see that lady
Leaning or
standing or walking
In the first loveliness of womanhood,
And
with the fervour of my youthful eyes,
Has set me muttering like a
fool.
You
are more beautiful than anyone,
And yet your body had a flaw:
Your
small hands were not beautiful,
And I am afraid that you will
run
And paddle to the wrist
In that mysterious, always brimming
lake
Where those that have obeyed the holy law
Paddle and are
perfect. Leave unchanged
The hands that I have kissed,
For old
sake’s sake.
The
last stroke of midnight dies.
All day in the one chair
From
dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged
In rambling talk
with an image of air:
Vague memories, nothing but memories.
SAILING
TO BYZANTIUM
I
That
is no country for old men. The young
In one
another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations –
at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish,
flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten,
born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments
of unageing intellect.
II
An
aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick,
unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every
tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but
studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I
have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O
sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the
gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a
gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart
away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows
not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once
out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form
from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths
make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy
Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To
lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past,
or passing, or to come.
LEDA
AND THE SWAN
A
sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above
the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her
nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his
breast.
How
can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from
her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white
rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A
shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning
roof and tower
And Agamemnon
dead.
Being
so caught up,
So
mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his
knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her
drop?
AMONG
SCHOOL CHILDREN
I
I
walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in an
white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To
study reading-books and history,
To cut and sew, be neat in
everything
In the best modern way – the children’s eyes
In
momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
II
I
dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire, a tale that
she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some
childish day to tragedy –
Told, and it seemed that our two
natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to
alter Plato’s parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.
III
And
thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or
t’other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age –
For
even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler’s
heritage –
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And
thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a
living child.
IV
Her
present image floats into the mind –
Did
Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek
as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its
meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage
once – enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and
show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.
V
What
youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had
betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As
recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her son, did she but
see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A
compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty
of his setting forth?
VI
Plato
thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of
things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a
king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered
upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses
heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
VII
Both
nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are
not as those
That animate a mother’s reveries,
But keep a
marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts – O
Presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all
heavenly glory symbolise –
O self-born mockers of man’s
enterprise;
VIII
Labour
is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure
soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed
wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted
blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body
swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer
from the dance?
HE
WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN
Had
I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and
silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night
and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your
feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my
dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my
dreams.
THE
MOODS
Time
drops in decay,
Like a candle burnt out,
And the mountains and
woods
Have their day, have their day;
What one in the rout
Of
the fire-born moods,
Has fallen away?
***
W. B. Yeats es traducido por:
- Carlos Jiménez Arribas
- Ibon Zubiaur
Publicado
el 20/5/2010
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