

#Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen


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#### Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition


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Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen
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Author: William Butler Yeats
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### File Description

Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by Beatrix Färber, Rebecca Daly

Funded by School of History, University College, Cork 1. First draft.Extent of text: 1737 words#### Publication


CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork  
College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt

 (2014) Distributed by CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.  
Text ID Number: E910001-058Availability [RESTRICTED] 
The works by W. B. Yeats are in the public domain. This electronic text is available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of private or academic research and teaching.


#### Notes

Written in 1919; first published in the *Dial* in September 1921. In the *London Mercury* (Nov 1921) it was entitled 'Thoughts upon the Present State of the World'. (A. Norman Jeffares, p. 273).

#### Sources


**Literature (a small selection)**2. W. B. Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats, consisting of Reveries over childhood and youth, The trembling of the veil, and Dramatis personae (New York 1938).
3. Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks. Corrected edition with a new preface (Oxford 1979). [First published New York 1948; reprinted London 1961.]
4. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan 1957).
5. W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York: Macmillan 1961).
6. W. B. Yeats, Explorations: selected by Mrs W. B. Yeats (London/New York: Macmillan 1962).
7. Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats (New York 1964).
8. Toby A. Foshay, 'Yeats's 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen': Chronology, Chronography and Chronic Misreading', in Journal of Narrative Technique, 13.2 (Spring 1983) 100–108.
9. A. Norman Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats (Stanford 1984).
10. David B. McWhirter, 'The Rhythm of the Body in Yeats' 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen'', in College Literature, 13.1 (1986) 44–54.
11. Jefferson Holdridge, Those Mingled Seas: The Poetry of W. B. Yeats, the Beautiful and the Sublime (Dublin 2000).
12. Rob Doggett, 'Writing out (Of) Chaos: Constructions of History in Yeats's 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen' and 'Meditations in Time of Civil War'', in Twentieth Century Literature, 47.2 (Summer 2001) 137–168.
13. Helen Vendler, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form (Oxford/New York 2007).
14. Rebecca Sheehan, 'Competing with 'The Barbarous Clangour of a Gong': Why 'Theme of the Traitor and the Hero' Begins in 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen'', in Journal of Modern Literature 32.3 (Spring 2009) 22–38.
15. A general bibliography is available online at the official web site of the Nobel Prize. See: http://nobelprize.org/nobel\_prizes/literature/laureates/1923/yeats-bibl.html
**The edition used in the digital edition**2. William Butler Yeats Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen in , Ed. Richard J. Finneran The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Macmillan Press, London, (1991) page 206–210

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The whole poem.


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Created: (1919) #### Use of language


##### Language: [EN] The poem is in English.


### Revision History


* (2014-04-02) Beatrix Färber (ed.)

* File parsed and validated; SGML and HTML files created.
* (2014-04-01) Beatrix Färber (ed.)

* TEI header created with bibliographical detail; structural markup applied according to CELT practice.
* (1996) Donnchadh Ó Corráin (data capture)

* Text captured




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#### Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition: E910001-058


### Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen: Author: William Butler Yeats




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p.206


1. Many ingenious lovely things are gone 
  
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, 


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p.207


Protected from the circle of the moon 
  
That pitches common things about. There stood 
  
Amid the ornamental bronze and stone 
  
An ancient image made of olive wood — 
  
And gone are Phidias' famous ivories 
  
And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.
* We too had many pretty toys when young; 
  
A law indifferent to blame or praise, 
  
To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong 
  
Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays; 
  
Public opinion ripening for so long 
  
We thought it would outlive all future days. 
  
O what fine thought we had because we thought 
  
That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
+ All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned, 
  
And a great army but a showy thing; 
  
What matter that no cannon had been turned 
  
Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king 
  
Thought that unless a little powder burned 
  
The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting 
  
And yet it lack all glory; and perchance 
  
The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.
- Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare 
  
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery 
  
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door, 
  
To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free; 
  
The night can sweat with terror as before 
  
We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, 
  
And planned to bring the world under a rule, 
  
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
* He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned 
  
Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant 
  
From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand, 
  
Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent 


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p.208


On master-work of intellect or hand, 
  
No honour leave its mighty monument, 
  
Has but one comfort left: all triumph would 
  
But break upon his ghostly solitude.
+ But is there any comfort to be found? 
  
Man is in love and loves what vanishes, 
  
What more is there to say? That country round 
  
None dared admit, if such a thought were his, 
  
Incendiary or bigot could be found 
  
To burn that stump on the Acropolis, 
  
Or break in bits the famous ivories 
  
Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.
1. When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound 
  
A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth, 
  
It seemed that a dragon of air 
  
Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round 
  
Or hurried them off on its own furious path; 
  
So the Platonic Year 
  
Whirls out new right and wrong, 
  
Whirls in the old instead; 
  
All men are dancers and their tread 
  
Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.
1. Some moralist or mythological poet 
  
Compares the solitary soul to a swan; 
  
I am satisfied with that, 
  
Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, 
  
Before that brief gleam of its life be gone, 
  
An image of its state; 
  
The wings half spread for flight, 
  
The breast thrust out in pride 
  
Whether to play, or to ride 
  
Those winds that clamour of approaching night.


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p.209

* A man in his own secret meditation 
  
Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made 
  
In art or politics; 
  
Some platonist affirms that in the station 
  
Where we should cast off body and trade 
  
The ancient habit sticks, 
  
And that if our works could 
  
But vanish with our breath 
  
That were a lucky death, 
  
For triumph can but mar our solitude.
+ The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven: 
  
That image can bring wildness, bring a rage 
  
To end all things, to end 
  
What my laborious life imagined, even 
  
The half-imagined, the half-written page; 
  
O but we dreamed to mend 
  
Whatever mischief seemed 
  
To afflict mankind, but now 
  
That winds of winter blow 
  
Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
1. We, who seven yeats ago 
  
Talked of honour and of truth, 
  
Shriek with pleasure if we show 
  
The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth.
1. Come let us mock at the great 
  
That had such burdens on the mind 
  
And toiled so hard and late 
  
To leave some monument behind, 
  
Nor thought of the levelling wind.
* Come let us mock at the wise; 
  
With all those calendars whereon 


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p.210


They fixed old aching eyes, 
  
They never saw how seasons run, 
  
And now but gape at the sun.
+ Come let us mock at the good 
  
That fancied goodness might be gay, 
  
And sick of solitude 
  
Might proclaim a holiday: 
  
Wind shrieked — and where are they?
- Mock mockers after that 
  
That would not lift a hand maybe 
  
To help good, wise or great 
  
To bar that foul storm out, for we 
  
Traffic in mockery.
1. Violence upon the roads: violence of horses; 
  
Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded 
  
On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane, 
  
But wearied running round and round in their courses 
  
All break and vanish, and evil gathers head: 
  
Herodias' daughters have returned again, 
  
A sudden blast of dusty wind and after 
  
Thunder of feet, tumult of images, 
  
Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind; 
  
And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter 
  
All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries, 
  
According to the wind, for all are blind. 
  
But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon 
  
There lurches past, his great eyes without thought 
  
Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks, 
  
That insolent fiend Robert Artisson 
  
To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought 
  
Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.










