

#Shepherd and Goatherd


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#### Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition


### Background details and bibliographic information


Shepherd and Goatherd
=====================


Author: William Butler Yeats
----------------------------


### File Description

Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by Beatrix Färber

Funded by School of History, University College, Cork 1. First draft.Extent of text: 1722 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: E910001-059Availability [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

This poem was finished on 19 March 1918 and first published in *The Wild Swans at Coole* with the title *The Sad Shepherd*. The title was changed in *Collected Poems* (A. Norman Jeffares, p. 172).

#### Sources


**Literature (a small selection)**2. Jeremiah Curtin, Myths and Folk-lore in Ireland (Boston 1890).
3. W. B. Yeats, The Rose (1893).
4. W. B. Yeats, Poems (London 1895).
5. Edmund Spenser, Astrophel, (first published 1595), reprinted in: The Complete Poetical Worksof Edmund Spenser (Cambridge 1908).
6. 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).
7. Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks. Corrected edition with a new preface (Oxford 1979). [First published New York 1948; reprinted London 1961.]
8. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan 1957).
9. W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York: Macmillan 1961).
10. W. B. Yeats, Explorations: selected by Mrs W. B. Yeats (London/New York: Macmillan 1962).
11. Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats (New York 1964).
12. A. Norman Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats (Stanford 1984).
13. Helen Vendler, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form (Oxford/New York 2007).
14. 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 Shepherd and Goatherd in , Ed. Richard J. Finneran The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Macmillan Press, London, (1991) pages 142–145

### Encoding


#### Project Description


CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts


#### Sampling Declaration


The whole poem.


#### Editorial Declaration


##### Correction


The text has been proof-read twice.


##### Normalization


The electronic text represents the edited text.


##### Hyphenation


The editorial practice of the hard-copy editor has been retained.


##### Segmentation


div0= the individual poem, stanzas are marked lg.


##### Interpretation


Names of persons (given names), and places are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.


### Profile Description


Created: (March 1918) #### Use of language


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


### Revision History


* (2014-04-29) Beatrix Färber (ed.)

* File parsed and validated; SGML and HTML files created.
* (2014-04-03) Beatrix Färber (ed.)

* File proofed (1); structural markup applied according to CELT practice; TEI header created.
* (1996) Donnchadh Ó Corráin (data capture)

* Text captured




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#### Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition: E910001-059


### Shepherd and Goatherd: Author: William Butler Yeats




---

p.142


1. **Shepherd**That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year. 
  
I wished before it ceased.

**Goatherd**
  
Nor bird nor beast 
  
Could make me wish for anything this day, 
  
Being old, but that the old alone might die, 
  
And that would be against God's providence. 
  
Let the young wish. But what has brought you here? 
  
Never until this moment have we met 
  
Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap 
  
From stone to Stone. * **Shepherd**I am looking for strayed sheep; 
  
Something has troubled me and in my trouble 
  
I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone, 
  
For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble 
  
And make the daylight sweet once more; but when 
  
I had driven every rhyme into its place 
  
The sheep had gone from theirs. **Goatherd**
  
I know right well 
  
What turned so good a shepherd from his charge.
+ **Shepherd**He that was best in every country sport 
  
And every country craft, and of us all 
  
Most courteous to slow age and hasty youth, 
  
Is dead. 


---

p.143


**Goatherd**
  
The boy that brings my griddle-cake 
  
Brought the bare news.
- **Shepherd**He had thrown the crook away 
  
And died in the great war beyond the sea. **Goatherd**
  
He had often played his pipes among my hills, 
  
And when he played it was their loneliness, 
  
The exultation of their stone, that cried 
  
Under his fingers.
* **Shepherd**I had it from his mother, 
  
And his own flock was browsing at the door. **Goatherd**
  
How does she bear her grief? There is not a shepherd 
  
But grows more gentle when he speaks her name, 
  
Remembering kindness done, and how can I, 
  
That found when I had neither goat nor grazing 
  
New welcome and old wisdom at her fire 
  
Till winter blasts were gone, but speak of her 
  
Even before his children and his wife.
+ **Shepherd**She goes about her house erect and calm 
  
Between the pantry and the linen-chest, 
  
Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooks 
  
Her labouring men, as though her darling lived, 
  
But for her grandson now; there is no change 
  
But such as I have Seen upon her face 
  
Watching our shepherd sports at harvest-time 
  
When her son's turn was over. **Goatherd**
  
Sing your song. 
  
I too have rhymed my reveries, but youth 
  
Is hot to show whatever it has found, 
  
And till that's done can neither work nor wait. 
  
Old goatherds and old goats, if in all else 
  
Youth can excel them in accomplishment, 
  
Are learned in waiting.
- **Shepherd**You cannot but have seen 
  
That he alone had gathered up no gear, 
  
Set carpenters to work on no wide table, 
  
On no long bench nor lofty milking-shed 


---

p.144


As others will, when first they take possession, 
  
But left the house as in his father's time 
  
As though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo, 
  
No settled man. And now that he is gone 
  
There's nothing of him left but half a score 
  
Of sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes. **Goatherd**
  
You have put the thought in rhyme.
* **Shepherd**I worked all day, 
  
And when 'twas done so little had I done 
  
That maybe ‘I am sorry’ in plain prose 
  
Had sounded better to your mountain fancy.
+ **Shepherd (sings)**'Like the speckled bird that steers 
  
Thousands of leagues oversea, 
  
And runs or a while half-flies 
  
On his yellow legs through our meadows, 
  
He stayed for a while; and we 
  
Had scarcely accustomed our ears 
  
To his speech at the break of day, 
  
Had scarcely accustomed our eyes 
  
To his shape at the rinsing-pool 
  
Among the evening shadows, 
  
When he vanished from ears and eyes. 
  
I might have wished on the day 
  
He came, but man is a fool.' **Goatherd**
  
You sing as always of the natural life, 
  
And I that made like music in my youth 
  
Hearing it now have sighed for that young man 
  
And certain lost companions of my own.
- **Shepherd**They say that on your barren mountain ridge 
  
You have measured out the road that the soul treads 
  
When it has vanished from our natural eyes; 
  
That you have talked with apparitions. **Goatherd**
  
Indeed 
  
My daily thoughts since the first stupor of youth 
  
Have found the path my goats' feet cannot find.


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p.145

* **Shepherd**Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have plucked 
  
Some medicable herb to make our grief 
  
Less bitter. **Goatherd**
  
They have brought me from that ridge 
  
Seed-pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy.
+ **Goatherd (sings)**'He grows younger every second 
  
That were all his birthdays reckoned 
  
Much too solemn seemed; 
  
Because of what he had dreamed, 
  
Or the ambitions that he served, 
  
Much too solemn and reserved. 
  
Jaunting, journeying 
  
To his own dayspring, 
  
He unpacks the loaded pern 
  
Of all 'twas pain or joy to learn, 
  
Of all that he had made. 
  
The outrageous war shall fade; 
  
At some old winding whitethorn root 
  
He'll practise on the shepherd's flute, 
  
Or on the close-cropped grass 
  
Court his shepherd lass, 
  
Or put his heart into some game 
  
Till daytime, playtime seem the same; 
  
Knowledge he shall unwind 
  
Through victories of the mind, 
  
Till, clambering at the cradle-side, 
  
He dreams himself his mother's pride, 
  
All knowledge lost in trance 
  
Of sweeter ignorance.' **Shepherd**
  
When I have shut these ewes and this old ram 
  
Into the fold, we'll to the woods and there 
  
Cut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn bark 
  
But put no name and leave them at her door. 
  
To know the mountain and the valley have grieved 
  
May be a quiet thought to wife and mother, 
  
And children when they spring up shoulder-high.












