Cyril Hodges
yeats
He came out of his twilight into the fulness of the sun,
And yet was never a creature of his age. He was lured,
Somewhere between the slipping shadows of the past and the
Impossibility of a future where castled heroes
And tall fair women were awakened from their aching dream,
And lived again in a fable of an immortal Ireland.
He could not return: there is no way back. At first he toyed
With the half-historic, half-imagined wealth of gold
In the shattered image of his imperial Byzantium;
And then, that source exhausted, turned to the troubles of his
People; and wrote their names upon a sounding-board that made
Them seem uncommon ... heroic in the black defiance.
But he was not bewitched: the poet is the man who is least
Dazzled by his own hopes; He slowly hardened into
An affirmation, a tablet of laws to be bequeathed
To us, whether Irish, or mere citizens of the world.
His language was asperity, a harsh music of his own;
And he was great because he had come from the country of
The gods, had mixed with men, had drunk the sour dregs of wine
From our cold untended vineyards; and remained pure self.
Who can pass by the grave at Drumcliff, despite his sternest
Admonition, without pausing to look at his granite verse
Cut into lasting stone, that will not out-last the man.
And yet was never a creature of his age. He was lured,
Somewhere between the slipping shadows of the past and the
Impossibility of a future where castled heroes
And tall fair women were awakened from their aching dream,
And lived again in a fable of an immortal Ireland.
He could not return: there is no way back. At first he toyed
With the half-historic, half-imagined wealth of gold
In the shattered image of his imperial Byzantium;
And then, that source exhausted, turned to the troubles of his
People; and wrote their names upon a sounding-board that made
Them seem uncommon ... heroic in the black defiance.
But he was not bewitched: the poet is the man who is least
Dazzled by his own hopes; He slowly hardened into
An affirmation, a tablet of laws to be bequeathed
To us, whether Irish, or mere citizens of the world.
His language was asperity, a harsh music of his own;
And he was great because he had come from the country of
The gods, had mixed with men, had drunk the sour dregs of wine
From our cold untended vineyards; and remained pure self.
Who can pass by the grave at Drumcliff, despite his sternest
Admonition, without pausing to look at his granite verse
Cut into lasting stone, that will not out-last the man.
Page(s) 33
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