I tried getting it up on the blog but it’s just too big.

Cheers!

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The Dedication To A Book Of Stories
by William Butler Yeats

There was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this wave-worn and tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.

It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer’s memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.
For all who heard it dreamed a little while.

Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas,
And planning, plotting always that on some morrow
May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow!

I also bear a bell-branch full of ease.
I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed
Until the sap of summer had grown weary!
I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire,
The willow of the many-sorrowed world.
That country where a man can be so crossed;
Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed

Ah, Exiles, wandering over many lands!
My bell branch murmurs: the gay bells bring laughter,
Leaping to shake a cobweb from the rafter

The sad bells bow the forehead on the hands.
And yet the saddest chimes are best enjoyed.
Gay bells or sad, they bring you memories
Of half-forgotten innocent old places:
We and our bitterness have left no traces
On Munster grass and Connemara skies.

A honeyed ringing: under the new skies
They bring you memories of old village faces,
Cabins gone now, old well-sides, old dear places;
And men who loved the cause that never dies.
On Munster grass and Connemara skies.

(there are a few versions of this floating around, I guess he had to do a couple of re-writes, this is the longest one)

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