

#Supernatural Songs


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#### Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition


### Background details and bibliographic information


Supernatural Songs
==================


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: 1910 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: E930001-100Availability [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

First published 1934 in *The King of the Great Clock-Tower*. That version contains only the first eight parts of the poem. A revised and enlarged version published in 'A Full Moon in March' (see n.2 under 'Editions' below).

#### Sources


**Editions**2. W. B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock-Tower (=A Full Moon in March) (Dublin: Cuala Press 1934)
3. W. B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March, part 3, 'Parnell's Funeral and other Poems' (London 1935).
4. W. B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock-Tower, and Commentaries and Poems [Facsimile reprint of 1st edition, Dublin 1934] (Shannon: Irish University Press 1970).
5. W. B. Yeats, 'The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats', A new edition', edited by Richard J. Finneran, 1983 [reprinted].
**Literature (selection)**2. T. K. Dunseath, 'Yeats and the Genesis of Supernatural Song', *ELH* 28/4, December 1961, 399–416.
3. Helen Vendler, 'New Wine in Old Bottles: Yeats's 'Supernatural Songs'', The Southern Review, Spring 1991, 399–406.
4. Patrick F. Sheeran, 'Legends of the Supernatural in Anglo-Irish Literature: The Migration of Signs: Third Response to Brian Earl's Paper', Béaloideas 60/61 (1992/92), 157–160.
5. Helen Vendler, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form (Oxford/New York 2007).
6. A 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 Supernatural Poems in , Ed. Richard J. Finneran The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Macmillan Press, London, (1991) page 283–289

### 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, div1= the part, stanzas are marked lg.


##### Interpretation


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


#### Canonical References


This text uses the DIV1 element to represent the part. ### Profile Description


Created: By William Butler Yeats (1865–1939).
 Date range: between March 1933 and December 1934.#### Use of language


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


### Revision History


* (2014-02-06) Beatrix Färber (ed.)

* SGML and HTML files created.
* (2014-02-04) Beatrix Färber (ed.)

* TEI header created; file parsed and validated. Structural markup applied according to CELT practice.
* (1996?) Students at the CELT Project, UCC (ed.)

* First proofing.
* (1996?) Students at the CELT Project, UCC (data capture)

* Text captured




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#### Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition: E930001-100


### Supernatural Songs: Author: William Butler Yeats




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p.283


Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn
-------------------------------------


1. Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night 
  
With open book you ask me what I do. 
  
Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar 
  
To those that never saw this tonsured head 


---

p.284


Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked. 
  
Of Baile and Aillinn you need not speak, 
  
All know their tale, all know what leaf and twig, 
  
What juncture of the apple and the yew, 
  
Surmount their bones; but speak what none have heard.
2. The miracle that gave them such a death 
  
Transfigured to pure substance what had once 
  
Been bone and sinew; when such bodies join 
  
There is no touching here, nor touching there, 
  
Nor straining joy, but whole is joined to whole; 
  
For the intercourse of angels is a light 
  
Where for its moment both seem lost, consumed.
3. Here in the pitch-dark atmosphere above 
  
The trembling of the apple and the yew, 
  
Here on the anniversary of their death, 
  
The anniversary of their first embrace, 
  
Those lovers, purified by tragedy, 
  
Hurry into each other's arms; these eyes, 
  
By water, herb and solitary prayer 
  
Made aquiline, are open to that light. 
  
Though somewhat broken by the leaves, that light 
  
Lies in a circle on the grass; therein 
  
I turn the pages of my holy book.
Ribh denounces Patrick
----------------------

1. An abstract Greek absurdity has crazed the man, 
  
A Trinity that is wholly masculine. Man, woman, child 
  
(daughter or son), 
  
That's how all natural or supernatural stories run.
2. Natural and supernatural with the self-same ring are wed. 
  
As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, 
  
For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. 


---

p.285


Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind; 
  
When the conflagration of their passion sinks, damped by the body or the mind, 
  
That juggling nature mounts, her coil in their embraces twined.
3. The mirror-scaled serpent is multiplicity, 
  
But all that run in couples, on earth, in flood or air, share God that is but three, 
  
And could beget or bear themselves could they but love as He.
Ribh in Ecstasy
---------------

1. What matter that you understood no word! 
  
Doubtless I spoke or sang what I had heard 
  
In broken sentences. My soul had found 
  
All happiness in its own cause or ground. 
  
Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot 
  
Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot 
  
Those amorous cries that out of quiet come 
  
And must the common round of day resume.
There
-----

1. There all the barrel-hoops are knit, 
  
There all the serpent-tails are bit, 
  
There all the gyres converge in one, 
  
There all the planets drop in the Sun.


---

p.286


Ribh considers Christian Love insufficient
------------------------------------------

1. Why should I seek for love or study it? 
  
It is of God and passes human wit. 
  
I study hatred with great diligence, 
  
For that's a passion in my own control, 
  
A sort of besom that can clear the soul 
  
Of everything that is not mind or sense.
2. Why do I hate man, woman or event? 
  
That is a light my jealous soul has sent. 
  
From terror and deception freed it can 
  
Discover impurities, can show at last 
  
How soul may walk when all such things are past, 
  
How soul could walk before such things began.
3. Then my delivered soul herself shall learn 
  
A darker knowledge and in hatred turn 
  
From every thought of God mankind has had. 
  
Thought is a garment and the soul's a bride 
  
That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide: 
  
Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.
4. At stroke of midnight soul cannot endure 
  
A bodily or mental furniture. 
  
What can she take until her Master give! 
  
Where can she look until He make the show! 
  
What can she know until He bid her know! 
  
How can she live till in her blood He live!
He and She
----------

1. As the moon sidles up 
  
Must she sidle up, 
  
As trips the scared moon 


---

p.287


Away must she trip: 
  
'His light had struck me blind 
  
Dared I stop'.
2. She sings as the moon sings: 
  
'I am I, am I; 
  
The greater grows my light 
  
The further that I fly.' 
  
All creation shivers 
  
With that sweet cry.
What Magic Drum?
----------------

1. He holds him from desire, all but stops his breathing lest 
  
primordial Motherhood forsake his limbs, the child no longer rest, 
  
Drinking joy as it were milk upon his breast.
2. Through light-obliterating garden foliage what magic drum? 
  
Down limb and breast or down that glimmering belly move his mouth and sinewy tongue. 
  
What from the forest came? What beast has licked its young?
Whence had they come?
---------------------

1. Eternity is passion, girl or boy 
  
Cry at the onset of their sexual joy 
  
'For ever and for ever'; then awake 
  
Ignorant what Dramatis personae spake; 
  
A passion-driven exultant man sings out 
  
Sentences that he has never thought; 
  
The Flagellant lashes those submissive loins 
  
Ignorant what that dramatist enjoins, 
  
What master made the lash. Whence had they come, 
  
The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? 
  
What sacred drama through her body heaved 
  
When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?


---

p.288


The Four Ages of Man
--------------------

1. He with body waged a fight, 
  
But body won; it walks upright.
2. Then he struggled with the heart; 
  
Innocence and peace depart.
3. Then he struggled with the mind; 
  
His proud heart he left behind.
4. Now his wars on God begin; 
  
At stroke of midnight God shall win.
Conjunctions
------------

1. If Jupiter and Saturn meet, 
  
What a cop of mummy wheat!
2. The sword's a cross; thereon He died: 
  
On breast of Mars the goddess sighed.
A Needle's Eye
--------------

1. All the stream that's roaring by 
  
Came out of a needle's eye; 
  
Things unborn, things that are gone, 
  
From needle's eye still goad it on.


---

p.289


Meru
----

1. Civilisation is hooped together, brought 
  
Under a rule, under the semblance of peace 
  
By manifold illusion; but man's life is thought, 
  
And he, despite his terror, cannot cease 
  
Ravening through century after century, 
  
Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come 
  
Into the desolation of reality: 
  
Egypt and Greece, good-bye, and good-bye, Rome! 
  
Hermits upon Mount Meru or Everest, 
  
Caverned in night under the drifted snow, 
  
Or where that snow and winter's dreadful blast 
  
Beat down upon their naked bodies, know 
  
That day brings round the night, that before dawn 
  
His glory and his monuments are gone.












