I <br />A SPECKLED cat and a tame hare <br />Eat at my hearthstone <br />And sleep there; <br />And both look up to me alone <br />For learning and defence <br />As I look up to providence. <br />I start out of my sleep to think <br />Some day I may forget <br />Their food and drink; <br />Or, the house door left unshut, <br />The hare may run till it's found <br />The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound. <br />I bear a burden that might well try <br />Men that do all by rule, <br />And what can I <br />That am a wandering-witted fool <br />But pray to God that He ease <br />My great responsibilities? <br />I slept on my three-legged stool by thc fire. <br />The speckled cat slept on my knee; <br />We never thought to enquire <br />Where the brown hare might be, <br />And whether the door were shut. <br />Who knows how she drank the wind <br />Stretched up on two legs from the mat, <br />Before she had settled her mind <br />To drum with her heel and to leap? <br />Had I but awakened from sleep <br />And called her name, she had heard. <br />It may be, and had not stirred, <br />That now, it may be, has found <br />The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound. <br /> <br />ANOTHER SONG OF A FOOL <br /> <br />THIS great purple butterfly, <br />In the prison of my hands, <br />Has a learning in his eye <br />Not a poor fool understands. <br />Once he lived a schoolmaster <br />With a stark, denying look; <br />A string of scholars went in fear <br />Of his great birch and his great book. <br />Like the clangour of a bell, <br />Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet. <br />That is how he learnt so well <br />To take the roses for his meat.<br /><br />William Butler Yeats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-songs-of-a-fool/
