Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). The Wild Swans at Coole. 1919.

38. Two Songs of a Fool

A SPECKLED cat and a tame hare

Eat at my hearthstone

And sleep there;

And both look up to me alone

For learning and defence

As I look up to Providence.

I start out of my sleep to think

Some day I may forget

Their food and drink;

Or, the house door left unshut,

The hare may run till it’s found

The horn’s sweet note and the tooth of the hound.

I bear a burden that might well try

Men that do all by rule,

And what can I

That am a wandering witted fool

But pray to God that He ease

My great responsibilities?

I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire,

The speckled cat slept on my knee;

We never thought to enquire

Where the brown hare might be,

And whether the door were shut.

Who knows how she drank the wind

Stretched up on two legs from the mat,

Before she had settled her mind

To drum with her heel and to leap:

Had I but awakened from sleep

And called her name she had heard,

It may be, and had not stirred,

That now, it may be, has found

The horn’s sweet note and the tooth of the hound.