The Death of Hanrahan by W.B. Yeats

Hanrahan, that was never long in one place, was back again among the / villages that are at the foot of Slieve Echtge, Illeton and Scalp and / Ballylee, stopping sometimes in one house and sometimes in another, and / finding a welcome in every place for the sake of the old times and of / his poetry and his learning. There was some silver and some copper money / in the little leather bag under his coat, but it was seldom he needed to / take anything from it, for it was little he used, and there was not one / of the people that would have taken payment from him. His hand had grown / heavy on the blackthorn he leaned on, and his cheeks were hollow and / worn, but so far as food went, potatoes and milk and a bit of oaten / cake, he had what he wanted of it; and it is not on the edge of so wild / and boggy a place as Echtge a mug of spirits would be wanting, with the / taste of the turf smoke on it. He would wander about the big wood at / Kinadife, or he would sit through many hours of the day among the / rushes about Lake Belshragh, listening to the streams from the hills, or / watching the shadows in the brown bog pools; sitting so quiet as not to / startle the deer that came down from the heather to the grass and the / tilled fields at the fall of night. As the days went by it seemed as if / he was beginning to belong to some world out of sight and misty, that / has for its mearing the colours that are beyond all other colours and / the silences that are beyond all silences of this world. And sometimes / he would hear coming and going in the wood music that when it stopped / went from his memory like a dream; and once in the stillness of midday / he heard a sound like the clashing of many swords, that went on for long / time without any break. And at the fall of night and at moonrise the / lake would grow to be like a gateway of silver and shining stones, and / there would come from its silence the faint sound of keening and of / frightened laughter broken by the wind, and many pale beckoning hands.

He was sitting looking into the water one evening in harvest time, / thinking of all the secrets that were shut into the lakes and the / mountains, when he heard a cry coming from the south, very faint at / first, but getting louder and clearer as the shadow of the rushes grew / longer, till he could hear the words, 'I am beautiful, I am beautiful; / the birds in the air, the moths under the leaves, the flies over the / water look at me, for they never saw any one so beautiful as myself. I / am young; I am young: look upon me, mountains; look upon me, perishing / woods, for my body will shine like the white waters when you have been / hurried away. You and the whole race of men, and the race of the beasts / and the race of the fish and the winged race are dropping like a candle / that is nearly burned out, but I laugh out because I am in my youth. ' / The voice would break off from time to time, as if tired, and then it / would begin again, calling out always the same words, 'I am beautiful, / I am beautiful. ' Presently the bushes at the edge of the little lake / trembled for a moment, and a very old woman forced her way among them, / and passed by Hanrahan, walking with very slow steps. Her face was of / the colour of earth, and more wrinkled than the face of any old hag that / was ever seen, and her grey hair was hanging in wisps, and the rags / she was wearing did not hide her dark skin that was roughened by all / weathers. She passed by him with her eyes wide open, and her head high, / and her arms hanging straight beside her, and she went into the shadow / of the hills towards the west.