CUMHAL called out, bending his head, <br />Till Dathi came and stood, <br />With a blink in his eyes, at the cave-mouth, <br />Between the wind and the wood. <br />And Cumhal said, bending his knees, <br />'I have come by the windy way <br />And learn to pray when you pray. <br />'I can bring you salmon out of the streams <br />And heron out of the skies.' <br />But Dathi folded his hands and smiled <br />With the secrets of God in his eyes. <br />And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke <br />All manner of blessed souls, <br />Women and children, young men with books, <br />And old men with croziers and stoles. <br />'praise God and God's Mother,' Dathi said, <br />'For God and God's Mother have sent <br />The blessedest souls that walk in the world <br />To fill your heart with content.' <br />'And which is the blessedest,' Cumhal said, <br />'Where all are comely and good? <br />Is it these that with golden thuribles <br />Are singing about the wood?' <br />'My eyes are blinking,' Dathi said, <br />'With the secrets of God half blind, <br />But I can see where the wind goes <br />And follow the way of the wind; <br />'And blessedness goes where the wind goes, <br />And when it is gone we are dead; <br />I see the blessedest soul in the world <br />And he nods a drunken head. <br />'O blessedness comes in the night and the day <br />And whither the wise heart knows; <br />And one has seen in the redness of wine <br />The Incorruptible Rose, <br />'That drowsily drops faint leaves on him <br />And the sweetness of desire, <br />While time and the world are ebbing away <br />In twilights of dew and of fire.'<br /><br />William Butler Yeats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-blessed/
