Shepherd And Goatherd
Shepherd. That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year.
I wished before it ceased.
Goatherd. Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God's providence.
Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?
Never until this moment have we met
Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap
From stone to Stone.
Shepherd. I am looking for strayed sheep;
Something has troubled me and in my rrouble
I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,
For rhme can beat a measure out of trouble
And make the daylight sweet once more; but when
I had driven every rhyme into its Place
The sheep had gone from theirs.
Goatherd. I know right well
What turned so good a shepherd from his charge.
Shepherd. He that was best in every country sport
And every country craft, and of us all
Most courteous to slow age and hasty youth,
Is dead.
Goatherd. The boy that brings my griddle-cake
Brought the bare news.
Shepherd. He had thrown the crook away
And died in the great war beyond the sea.
Goatherd. He had often played his pipes among my hills,
And when he played it was their loneliness,
The exultation of their stone, that died
Under his fingers.
Shepherd. I had it from his mother,
And his own flock was browsing at the door.
Goatherd. How does she bear her grief? There is not a
shepherd
But grows more gentle when he speaks her name,
Remembering kindness done, and how can I,
That found when I had neither goat nor grazing
New welcome and old wisdom at her fire
Till winter blasts were gone, but speak of her
Even before his children and his wife?
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poem by William Butler Yeats
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