William Butler (W. B.) Yeats

The Valley of the Black Pig

  • The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears
  • Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,
  • And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries
  • Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.
  • We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore,
  • The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,
  • Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you.
  • Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.
The Wind Among The Reeds, 1899.

Editor's Note:

In the notes of Later Poems (1922), Yeats wrote: "All over Ireland there are prophecies of the coming rout of the enemies of Ireland, in a certain Valley of the Black Pig, and these prophecies are, no doubt, now, as they were in the Fenian days, a political force. ...as a rule, periods of trouble bring prophecies of its near coming."

He Mourns for the Change That Has Come upon Him and His Beloved and Longs for the End of the World

  • Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns?
  • I have been changed to a hound with one red ear;
  • I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns,
  • For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire and fear
  • Under my feet that they follow you night and day.
  • A man with a hazel wand came without sound;
  • He changed me suddenly; I was looking another way;
  • And now my calling is but the calling of a hound;
  • And Time and Birth and Change are hurrying by.
  • I would that the Boar without bristles had come from the West
  • And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky
  • And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest.
The Wind Among The Reeds, 1899.