Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ISLAND OF SLEEP, by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ISLAND OF SLEEP, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Fled foam underneath us and round us, a wandering and milky smoke
Last Line: In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone.
Alternate Author Name(s): Yeats, W. B.
Subject(s): Sleep


Fled foam underneath us and round us, a wandering and milky smoke,
High as the saddle-girth, covering away from our glance the tide;
And those that fled, and that followed, from the foampale
distance broke;
The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.

I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair,
And never a song sang Niam, and over my finger-tips
Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair,
And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.

Were we days long or hours long in riding, when rolled in a
grisly peace,
An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?
And we stood on a sea's edge we saw not; for whiter than
new-washed fleece
Fled foam underneath us and round us, a wandering and milky smoke

And we rode on the plains of the sea's edge--the sea's edge
barren and grey,
Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,
Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.

But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling bark;
Dropping--a murmurous dropping--old silence and that one sound;
For no live creature lived there, no weasels moved in the dark;
Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.

And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night,
For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning, the gleams of
the world and the sun
Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light,
And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the
world was one.

Till the horse gave a whinny; for, cumbrous with stems of
the hazel and oak,
A valley flowed down from his hoofs, and there in the
long grass lay,
Under the starlight and shadow, a monstrous slumbering folk,
Their naked and gleaming bodies poured out and heaped in the way.

And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and blade;
And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years old
Could sleep on a couch of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid,
And more comely than man can make them with bronze and
silver and gold.

And each of the huge white creatures was huger than four score men;
The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands were
the claws of birds;

And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of
the mural glen,
The breathing came from those bodies, long-warless, grown
whiter than curds.

The wood was so spacious above them, that He who has stars
for His flocks,
Could fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His
dew-cumbered skies;
So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their
nests in their locks,
Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes.

And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and came,
Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow-place wide;
And the chief of the huge white creatures, his knees in his
soft star-flame,
Lay loose in a place of shadow; we drew the reins by his side.

Golden the nails of his bird-claws, flung loosely along the
dim ground;
In one was a branch soft-shining, with bells more many than sighs,
In midst of an old man's bosom; owls ruffling and pacing around
Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes

And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers; no, neither in
house of a cann
In a realm where the handsome are many, or in glamours by
demons flung,
Are faces alive with such beauty made known to the salt eye of man,
Yet weary with passions that faded when the seven-fold
seas were young.

And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep's forbear, far sung
by the Sennachies.
I saw how those slumbered, grown weary, there camping in
grasses deep,
Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the
wandering seas,
Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of
unhuman sleep.

Snatching the horn of Niam, I blew a lingering note;
Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like
the stirring of flies.
He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of
his throat,
Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes.

I cried, "Come out of the shadow, cann of the fails of gold!
And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of
your hands,
That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old.
Your questioner, Oisin, is worthy; he comes from the Fenian lands."

Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull with smoke of their dreams;
His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came;
Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow
dropping a sound in faint streams
Softer than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame.

Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth,
The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a
sea-covered stone

Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the
memories of the whole of my mirth,
And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full
to the bone.

In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low;
And the pearl-pale Niam lay by me, her brow on the midst
of my breast;
And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after
years 'gan flow;
Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our rest.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot
How the fetlocks drip blood in the battle, when the
fallen on fallen lie rolled;
How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron's plot;
And the names of the demons whose hammers made armour for
Conhor of old.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot,
That the spear-shaft is made out of ash-wood, the shield
out of osier and hide;
How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spearhead's burning spot;
How the slow blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide.

But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust
with their throngs,
Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales;
Came by me the canns of the Red Branch, with roaring of
laughter and songs,
Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the
tempest with sails.

Came Blanid, McNessa, tall Fergus, who feastward of old time slunk,
Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittle on his
beard never dry,
Dark Balor; as old as a forest, car-borne, his mighty head sunk
Helpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and deathmaking eye.

And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams,
And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone.
So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not,
with creatures of dreams,
In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone.





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