There was a green branch hung with many a bell <br />When her own people ruled this tragic Eire; <br />And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery, <br />A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell. <br /> <br />It charmed away the merchant from his guile, <br />And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle, <br />And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle: <br />And all grew friendly for a little while. <br /> <br />Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas, <br />And planning, plotting always that some morrow <br />May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow! <br />I also bear a bell-branch full of ease. <br /> <br />I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed <br />Until the sap of summer had grown weary! <br />I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire, <br />That country where a man can be so crossed; <br /> <br />Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed <br />That he's a loveless man: gay bells bring laughter <br />That shakes a mouldering cobweb from the rafter; <br />And yet the saddest chimes are best enjoyed. <br /> <br />Gay bells or sad, they bring you memories <br />Of half-forgotten innocent old places: <br />We and our bitterness have left no traces <br />On Munster grass and Connemara skies.<br /><br />William Butler Yeats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-dedication-to-a-book-of-stories-selected-fro/
