Emotions and Feelings

O heart! O heart! if she’d but turn her head, You’d know the folly of being comforted.

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, Folk dance like a wave of the sea.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with gold and silver light.

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Gray Truth is now her painted toy.

I could not look on Death, which being known, Men led me to him, blindfold and alone.

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same.

The flanneled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals.

A fool there was and he made his prayer (Even as you and I!) To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair (We called her the woman who did not care) But the fool he called her his lady fair— (Even as you and I!)

I’ve taken my fun where I’ve found it.

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.

We’re poor little lambs who’ve lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa! We’re little black sheep who’ve gone astray, Baa—aa—aa! Gentlemen rankers out on the spree, Damned from here to Eternity, God ha’ mercy on such as we, Baa! Yah! Baa!

To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned.

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ eastward to the sea, There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me; For the wind is in the palm trees, and the temple bells they say: “Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”

Though I’ve belted you an’ flayed you, By the livin’ Gawd that made you, You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth point goes; The butterfly upon the road Preaches contentment to that toad.

It is sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair: To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes Is delicate and rare: But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air!