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Celtic Twilight
by
William Butler Yeats
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A Coward
ONE day I was at the house of my friend the strong farmer, who
lives beyond Ben Bulben and Cope's mountain, and met there a young lad who
seemed to be disliked by the two daughters. I asked why they disliked him, and
was; told he was a coward. This interested me, for some whom robust children of
nature take to be cowards are but men and women with a nervous system too finely
made for their life and work. I looked at the lad; but no, that pink-and-white
face and strong body had nothing of undue sensibility. After a little he told me
his story. He had lived a wild and reckless life, until one day, two years
before, he was coming home late at night, and suddenly fell himself sinking in,
as it were, upon the ghostly world. For a moment he saw the face of a dead
brother rise up before him, and then he turned and ran. He did not stop till he
came to a cottage nearly a mile down the road. He flung himself against the door
with so much of violence that he broke the thick wooden bolt and fell upon the
floor. From that day he gave up his wild life, but was a hopeless coward.
Nothing could ever bring him to look, either by day or night, upon the spot
where he had seen the face, and he often went two miles round to avoid it; nor
could, he said, "the prettiest girl in the country" persuade him to
see her home after a party if he were alone. He feared everything, for he had
looked at the face no man can see unchanged-the imponderable face of a spirit.
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