'I'd have assurance that you are able To value beer--I will have no fool Dipping his nose into my ladle Because he has stumbled on this hole In the bad hour before the dawn. If you but drink that beer and say I will sleep until the winter's gone, Or maybe, to Midsummer Day You will sleep that length; and at the first I waited so for that or this-- Because the weather was a-cursed Or I had no woman there to kiss, And slept for half a year or so; But year by year I found that less Gave me such pleasure I'd forgo Even a half hour's nothingness, And when at one year's end I found I had not waked a single minute, I chose this burrow under ground. I will sleep away all Time within it: My sleep were now nine centuries But for those mornings when I find The lapwing at their foolish cries And the sheep bleating at the wind As when I also played the fool.' The beggar in a rage began Upon his hunkers in the hole, 'It's plain that you are no right man To mock at everything I love As if it were not worth the doing. I'd have a merry life enough If a good Easter wind were blowing, And though the winter wind is bad I should not be too down in the mouth For anything you did or said If but this wind were in the south.' But the other cried, 'You long for spring Or that the wind would shift a point And do not know that you would bring, If time were suppler in the joint, Neither the spring nor the south wind But the hour when you shall pass away And leave no smoking wick behind, For all life longs for the Last Day And there's no man but cocks his ear To know when Michael's trumpet cries That flesh and bone may disappear, And souls as if they were but sighs, And there be nothing but God left; But I alone being blessed keep Like some old rabbit to my cleft And wait Him in a drunken sleep.' He dipped his ladle in the tub And drank and yawned and stretched him out. The other shouted, 'You would rob My life of every pleasant thought And every comfortable thing And so take that and that.' Thereon He gave him a great pummelling, But might have pummelled at a stone For all the sleeper knew or cared; And after heaped the stones again And cursed and prayed, and prayed and cursed: 'Oh God if he got loose!' And then In fury and in panic fled From the Hell Mouth at Cruachan And gave God thanks that overhead The clouds were brightening with the dawn. THE PLAYER QUEEN (_Song from an Unfinished Play_) My mother dandled me and sang, 'How young it is, how young!' And made a golden cradle That on a willow swung. 'He went away,' my mother sang, 'When I was brought to bed,' And all the while her needle pulled The gold and silver thread. She pulled the thread and bit the thread And made a golden gown, And wept because she had dreamt that I Was born to wear a crown.