William Butler Yeats

 

painting by Sarah Purser, 1898.

I.  CRAZY JANE AND THE BISHOP

 

Bring me to the blasted oak

That I, midnight upon the stroke,

(All find safety in the tomb.)

May call down curses on his head

Because of my dear Jack that’s dead.

Coxcomb was the least he said:

The solid man and the coxcomb. 

 

Nor was he Bishop when his ban

Banished Jack the Journeyman,

(All find safety in the tomb.)

Nor so much as parish priest,

Yet he, an old book in his fist,

Cried that we lived like beast and beast:

The solid man and the coxcomb. 

 

The Bishop has a skin, God knows,

Wrinkled like the foot of a goose,

(All find safety in the tomb.)

Nor can he hide in holy black

The heron’s hunch upon his back,

But a birch-tree stood my Jack:

The solid man and the coxcomb. 

 

Jack had my virginity,

And bids me to the oak, for he

(All find safety in the tomb.)

Wanders out into the night

And there is shelter under it,

But should that other come, I spit:

The solid man and the coxcomb. 

 

 

II.  CRAZY JANE REPROVED 

 

I care not what the sailors say:

All those dreadful thunder-stones,

All that storm that blots the day

Can but show that Heaven yawns;

Great Europa played the fool

That changed a lover for a bull.

Fol de rol, fol de rol. 

 

To round that shell’s elaborate whorl,

Adorning every secret track

With the delicate mother-of-pearl,

Made the joints of Heaven crack:

So never hang your heart upon

A roaring, ranting journeyman.

Fol de rol, fol de rol. 

 

 

III.  CRAZY JANE ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT 

 

'Love is all

Unsatisfied

That cannot take the whole

Body and soul’;

And that is what Jane said. 

 

‘Take the sour

If you take me

I can scoff and lour

And scold for an hour.’

'That’s certainly the case,' said he. 

 

'Naked I lay,

The grass my bed;

Naked and hidden away,

That black day’;

And that is what Jane said. 

 

‘What can be shown?

What true love be?

All could be known or shown

If Time were but gone.’

'That’s certainly the case,' said he. 

 

 

IV.  CRAZY JANE AND JACK THE JOURNEYMAN 

 

I know, although when looks meet

I tremble to the bone,

The more I leave the door unlatched

The sooner love is gone,

For love is but a skein unwound

Between the dark and dawn. 

 

A lonely ghost the ghost is

That to God shall come;

I —love’s skein upon the ground,

My body in the tomb —

Shall leap into the light lost

In my mother’s womb. 

 

But were I left to lie alone

In an empty bed,

The skein so bound us ghost to ghost

When he turned his head

Passing on the road that night,

Mine must walk when dead. 

 

 

V.  CRAZY JANE ON GOD 

 

That lover of a night

Came when he would,

Went in the dawning light

Whether I would or no;

Men come, men go;

All things remain in God. 

 

Banners choke the sky;

Men-at-arms tread;

Armoured horses neigh

Where the great battle was

In the narrow pass:

All things remain in God. 

 

Before their eyes a house

That from childhood stood

Uninhabited, ruinous,

Suddenly lit up

From door to top:

All things remain in God. 

 

I had wild Jack for a lover;

Though like a road

That men pass over

My body makes no moan

But sings on:

All things remain in God.