Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MADNESS OF KING GOLL, by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MADNESS OF KING GOLL, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: I sat on cushioned otter skin
Last Line: Old.
Alternate Author Name(s): Yeats, W. B.
Subject(s): Wandering & Wanderers; Courts & Couriers; Music & Musicians


I sat on cushioned otter skin:
My word was law from Ith to Emen,
And shook at Invar Amargin
The hearts of the world-troubling seamen,
And drove tumult and war away
From girl and boy and man and beast;
The fields grew fatter day by day,
The wild fowl of the air increased;
And every ancient Ollave said,
While he bent down his fading head,
"He drives away the Northen cold."
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves
old.
I sat and mused and drank sweet wine;
A herdsman came from the inalnd valleys,
Crying, the pirates drove his swine
To fill their dark-bleaked hollow galleys.
I called my battle-breaking men,
And under the blinking of the stars
Fell on the pirates by the deep,
And hurled them in the gulph of sleep:
These hands won many a torque of gold.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves
old
But slowly, as I shouting slew
and trampled in bubbling mire,
In my most secret spirit grew
A whirling and a wandering fire:
I stood: keen stars above me shone,
Around me shone keen eyes of men:
A laughed aloud and hurried on
By rocky shore and rushy fen;
I laughed because birds fluttered by,
And starlight gleamed, and cloud flew high,
And rushes wave and waters rolled.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, te beech leaves
old
And now I wander in the woods
When summer gluts the golden bees,
Or in sutumnal solitudes
Arise the leopard-coloured trees;
Or when along the wintry strands
The cormorants shiver on their rocks;
I wander on, and wave my hands,
And sing, and shake my heavy locks.
The gray wolf knows me; by one ear
I lead alng the woodland deer;
the hares rn by me growing bold
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter rounde me, the beech leaves
old.
I came upon a little town,
That slumbered in the harvest moon,
And passed a-tiptoe up and down,
Murmuring, to a fitful tune,
How I have followed, night and day,
A tramping of tremendous feet
And bore it to the woods with me;
Of some unhuman misery
Our married voices wildly trolled.
The will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beach leaves
old.
I sang how, when day's toil is done,
Orchil shake out her lng dark hair
That hides away the dying son
And sheds faint odours through the air
When my hand passed from wire to wire
It quenched, with sound like falling dew,
The whirling and the wandering file;
But lift a mournful ulalu,
For the kind wires are torn and still,
And I must wander wood and hill
Through summer's heat and winter's cold.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beach leaves
old.




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