The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 1 of 8. Poems Lyrical and Narrative

THE ROSE OF THE WORLD

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,Mournful that no new wonder may betide,Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,And Usna’s children died.We and the labouring world are passing by:Amid men’s souls, that waver and give place,Like the pale waters in their wintry race,Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,Lives on this lonely face.Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:Before you were, or any hearts to beat,Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;He made the world to be a grassy roadBefore her wandering feet.

THE ROSE OF PEACE

If Michael, leader of God’s hostWhen Heaven and Hell are met,Looked down on you from Heaven’s door-postHe would his deeds forget.Brooding no more upon God’s warsIn his Divine homestead,He would go weave out of the starsA chaplet for your head.And all folk seeing him bow down,And white stars tell your praise,Would come at last to God’s great town,Led on by gentle ways;And God would bid His warfare cease,Saying all things were well;And softly make a rosy peace,A peace of Heaven with Hell.

THE ROSE OF BATTLE

Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurledAbove the tide of hours, trouble the air,And God’s bell buoyed to be the water’s care;While hushed from fear, or loud with hope, a bandWith blown, spray-dabbled hair gather at hand.Turn if you may from battles never done,I call, as they go by me one by one,Danger no refuge holds, and war no peace,For him who hears love sing and never cease,Beside her clean-swept hearth, her quiet shade:But gather all for whom no love hath madeA woven silence, or but came to castA song into the air, and singing pastTo smile on the pale dawn; and gather youWho have sought more than is in rain or dewOr in the sun and moon, or on the earth,Or sighs amid the wandering, starry mirth,Or comes in laughter from the sea’s sad lips;And wage God’s battles in the long gray ships.The sad, the lonely, the insatiable,To these Old Night shall all her mystery tell;God’s bell has claimed them by the little cryOf their sad hearts, that may not live nor die.Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurledUpon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ringThe bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.Beauty grown sad with its eternityMade you of us, and of the dim gray sea.Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait,For God has bid them share an equal fate;And when at last defeated in His wars,They have gone down under the same white stars,We shall no longer hear the little cryOf our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.

A FAERY SONG

Sung by the people of faery over Diarmuid and Grania, who lay in their bridal sleep under a CromlechWe who are old, old and gay,O so old!Thousands of years, thousands of years,If all were told:Give to these children, new from the world,Silence and love;And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,And the stars above:Give to these children, new from the world,Rest far from men.Is anything better, anything better?Tell us it then:Us who are old, old and gay,O so old!Thousands of years, thousands of years,If all were told.

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,And live alone in the bee-loud glade.And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,And evening full of the linnet’s wings.I will arise and go now, for always night and dayI hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

A CRADLE SONG

The angels are stoopingAbove your bed;They weary of troopingWith the whimpering dead.God’s laughing in heavenTo see you so good;The shining SevenAre gay with His mood.I kiss you and kiss you,My pigeon, my own;Ah, how I shall miss youWhen you have grown.

THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blowTill the seed of the fire flicker and glow;And then I must scrub and bake and sweepTill stars are beginning to blink and peep;And the young lie long and dream in their bedOf the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,And their day goes over in idleness,And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress:While I must work because I am old,And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

THE PITY OF LOVE

A pity beyond all tellingIs hid in the heart of love:The folk who are buying and selling;The clouds on their journey above;The cold wet winds ever blowing;And the shadowy hazel groveWhere mouse-gray waters are flowingThreaten the head that I love.

THE SORROW OF LOVE

The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,The full round moon and the star-laden sky,And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,Had hid away earth’s old and weary cry.And then you came with those red mournful lips,And with you came the whole of the world’s tears,And all the trouble of her labouring ships,And all the trouble of her myriad years.And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,The curd-pale moon, the white stars in the sky,And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves,Are shaken with earth’s old and weary cry.

WHEN YOU ARE OLD

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,And nodding by the fire, take down this book,And slowly read, and dream of the soft lookYour eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace,And loved your beauty with love false or true;But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,And loved the sorrows of your changing face.And bending down beside the glowing barsMurmur, a little sadly, how love fledAnd paced upon the mountains overheadAnd hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

THE WHITE BIRDS

I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose;Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!

A DREAM OF DEATH

I dreamed that one had died in a strange placeNear no accustomed hand:And they had nailed the boards above her face,The peasants of that land,And, wondering, planted by her solitudeA cypress and a yew:I came, and wrote upon a cross of wood,Man had no more to do:She was more beautiful than thy first love,This lady by the trees:And gazed upon the mournful stars above,And heard the mournful breeze.

A DREAM OF A BLESSED SPIRIT

All the heavy days are over;Leave the body’s coloured prideUnderneath the grass and clover,With the feet laid side by side.One with her are mirth and duty;Bear the gold embroidered dress,For she needs not her sad beauty,To the scented oaken press.Hers the kiss of Mother Mary,The long hair is on her face;Still she goes with footsteps wary,Full of earth’s old timid grace.With white feet of angels sevenHer white feet go glimmering;And above the deep of heaven,Flame on flame and wing on wing.

THE MAN WHO DREAMED OF FAERYLAND

He stood among a crowd at Drumahair;His heart hung all upon a silken dress,And he had known at last some tenderness,Before earth made of him her sleepy care;But when a man poured fish into a pile,It seemed they raised their little silver heads,And sang how day a Druid twilight shedsUpon a dim, green, well-beloved isle,Where people love beside star-laden seas;How Time may never mar their faery vowsUnder the woven roofs of quicken boughs:The singing shook him out of his new ease.He wandered by the sands of Lisadill;His mind ran all on money cares and fears,And he had known at last some prudent yearsBefore they heaped his grave under the hill;But while he passed before a plashy place,A lug-worm with its gray and muddy mouthSang how somewhere to north or west or southThere dwelt a gay, exulting, gentle race;And how beneath those three times blessed skiesA Danaan fruitage makes a shower of moons,And as it falls awakens leafy tunes:And at that singing he was no more wise.He mused beside the well of Scanavin,He mused upon his mockers: without failHis sudden vengeance were a country tale,Now that deep earth has drunk his body in;But one small knot-grass growing by the poolTold where, ah, little, all-unneeded voice!Old Silence bids a lonely folk rejoice,And chaplet their calm brows with leafage cool;And how, when fades the sea-strewn rose of day,A gentle feeling wraps them like a fleece,And all their trouble dies into its peace:The tale drove his fine angry mood away.He slept under the hill of Lugnagall;And might have known at last unhaunted sleepUnder that cold and vapour-turbaned steep,Now that old earth had taken man and all:Were not the worms that spired about his bonesA-telling with their low and reedy cry,Of how God leans His hands out of the sky,To bless that isle with honey in His tones;That none may feel the power of squall and wave,And no one any leaf-crowned dancer missUntil He burn up Nature with a kiss:The man has found no comfort in the grave.

THE TWO TREES

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,The holy tree is growing there;From joy the holy branches start,And all the trembling flowers they bear.The changing colours of its fruitHave dowered the stars with merry light;The surety of its hidden rootHas planted quiet in the night;The shaking of its leafy headHas given the waves their melody,And made my lips and music wed,Murmuring a wizard song for thee.There, through bewildered branches, goWinged Loves borne on in gentle strife,Tossing and tossing to and froThe flaming circle of our life.When looking on their shaken hair,And dreaming how they dance and dart,Thine eyes grow full of tender care:Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.Gaze no more in the bitter glassThe demons, with their subtle guile,Lift up before us when they pass,Or only gaze a little while;For there a fatal image grows,With broken boughs, and blackened leaves,And roots half hidden under snowsDriven by a storm that ever grieves.For all things turn to barrennessIn the dim glass the demons hold,The glass of outer weariness,Made when God slept in times of old.There, through the broken branches, goThe ravens of unresting thought;Peering and flying to and fro,To see men’s souls bartered and bought.When they are heard upon the wind,And when they shake their wings; alas!Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:Gaze no more in the bitter glass.

TO IRELAND IN THE COMING TIMES

Know, that I would accounted beTrue brother of that company,Who sang to sweeten Ireland’s wrong,Ballad and story, rann and song;Nor be I any less of them,Because the red-rose-bordered hemOf her, whose history beganBefore God made the angelic clan,Trails all about the written page;For in the world’s first blossoming ageThe light fall of her flying feetMade Ireland’s heart begin to beat;And still the starry candles flareTo help her light foot here and there;And still the thoughts of Ireland broodUpon her holy quietude.Nor may I less be counted oneWith Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,Because to him, who ponders well,My rhymes more than their rhyming tellOf the dim wisdoms old and deep,That God gives unto man in sleep.For the elemental beings goAbout my table to and fro.In flood and fire and clay and wind,They huddle from man’s pondering mind;Yet he who treads in austere waysMay surely meet their ancient gaze.Man ever journeys on with themAfter the red-rose-bordered hem.Ah, faeries, dancing under the moon,A Druid land, a Druid tune!While still I may, I write for youThe love I lived, the dream I knew.From our birthday, until we die,Is but the winking of an eye;And we, our singing and our love,The mariners of night above,And all the wizard things that goAbout my table to and fro,Are passing on to where may be,In truth’s consuming ecstasy,No place for love and dream at all;For God goes by with white foot-fall.I cast my heart into my rhymes,That you, in the dim coming times,May know how my heart went with themAfter the red-rose-bordered hem.

EARLY POEMS

III

THE WANDERINGS OF OISIN

‘Give me the world if Thou wilt, but grant me an asylum for my affections.’

Tulka.

To Edwin J. Ellis

BOOK I

THE WANDERINGS OF OISIN

S. PATRICYou who are bent, and bald, and blind,With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,Have known three centuries, poets sing,Of dalliance with a demon thing.OISINSad to remember, sick with years,The swift innumerable spears,The horsemen with their floating hair,And bowls of barley, honey, and wine,And feet of maidens dancing in tune,And the white body that lay by mine;But the tale, though words be lighter than air,Must live to be old like the wandering moon.Caolte, and Conan, and Finn were there,When we followed a deer with our baying hounds,With Bran, Sgeolan, and Lomair,And passing the Firbolgs’ burial mounds,Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hillWhere passionate Maeve is stony still;And found on the dove-gray edge of the seaA pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rodeOn a horse with bridle of findrinny;And like a sunset were her lips,A stormy sunset on doomed ships;A citron colour gloomed in her hair,But down to her feet white vesture flowed,And with the glimmering crimson glowedOf many a figured embroidery;And it was bound with a pearl-pale shellThat wavered like the summer streams,As her soft bosom rose and fell.S. PATRICYou are still wrecked among heathen dreams.OISIN‘Why do you wind no horn?’ she said.‘And every hero droop his head?The hornless deer is not more sadThat many a peaceful moment had,More sleek than any granary mouse,In his own leafy forest houseAmong the waving fields of fern:The hunting of heroes should be glad.’‘O pleasant maiden,’ answered Finn,‘We think on Oscar’s pencilled urn,And on the heroes lying slain,On Gavra’s raven-covered plain;But where are your noble kith and kin,And into what country do you ride?’‘My father and my mother areAengus and Edain, and my nameIs Niamh, and my land where tideAnd sleep drown sun and moon and star.’‘What dream came with you that you cameTo this dim shore on foam-wet feet?Did your companion wander awayFrom where the birds of Aengus wing?’She said, with laughter tender and sweet:‘I have not yet, war-weary king,Been spoken of with any one;For love of Oisin foam-wet feetHave borne me where the tempests blindYour mortal shores till time is done!’‘How comes it, princess, that your mindAmong undying people has runOn this young man, Oisin, my son?’‘I loved no man, though kings besoughtAnd many a man of lofty name,Until the Danaan poets came,Bringing me honeyed, wandering thoughtOf noble Oisin and his fame,Of battles broken by his hands,Of stories builded by his wordsThat are like coloured Asian birdsAt evening in their rainless lands.’O Patric, by your brazen bell,There was no limb of mine but fellInto a desperate gulph of love!‘You only will I wed,’ I cried,‘And I will make a thousand songs,And set your name all names above,And captives bound with leathern thongsShall kneel and praise you, one by one,At evening in my western dun.’‘O Oisin, mount by me and rideTo shores by the wash of the tremulous tide,Where men have heaped no burial mounds,And the days pass by like a wayward tune,Where broken faith has never been known,And the blushes of first love never have flown;And there I will give you a hundred hounds;No mightier creatures bay at the moon;And a hundred robes of murmuring silk,And a hundred calves and a hundred sheepWhose long wool whiter than sea froth flows,And a hundred spears and a hundred bows,And oil and wine and honey and milk,And always never-anxious sleep;While a hundred youths, mighty of limb,But knowing nor tumult nor hate nor strife,And a hundred maidens, merry as birds,Who when they dance to a fitful measureHave a speed like the speed of the salmon herds,Shall follow your horn and obey your whim,And you shall know the Danaan leisure:And Niamh be with you for a wife.’Then she sighed gently, ‘It grows late,Music and love and sleep await,Where I would be when the white moon climbs,The red sun falls, and the world grows dim.’And then I mounted and she bound meWith her triumphing arms around me,And whispering to herself enwound me;But when the horse had felt my weight,He shook himself and neighed three times:Caolte, Conan, and Finn came near,And wept, and raised their lamenting hands,And bid me stay, with many a tear;But we rode out from the human lands.In what far kingdom do you go,Ah, Fenians, with the shield and bow?Or are you phantoms white as snow,Whose lips had life’s most prosperous glow?O you, with whom in sloping valleys,Or down the dewy forest alleys,I chased at morn the flying deer,With whom I hurled the hurrying spear,And heard the foemen’s bucklers rattle,And broke the heaving ranks of battle!And Bran, Sgeolan, and Lomair,Where are you with your long rough hair?You go not where the red deer feeds,Nor tear the foemen from their steeds.S. PATRICBoast not, nor mourn with drooping headCompanions long accurst and dead,And hounds for centuries dust and air.OISINWe galloped over the glossy sea:I know not if days passed or hours,And Niamh sang continuallyDanaan songs, and their dewy showersOf pensive laughter, unhuman sound,Lulled weariness, and softly roundMy human sorrow her white arms wound.On! on! and now a hornless deerPassed by us, chased by a phantom houndAll pearly white, save one red ear;And now a maiden rode like the windWith an apple of gold in her tossing hand,And with quenchless eyes and fluttering hairA beautiful young man followed behind.‘Were these two born in the Danaan land,Or have they breathed the mortal air?’‘Vex them no longer,’ Niamh said,And sighing bowed her gentle head,And sighing laid the pearly tipOf one long finger on my lip.But now the moon like a white rose shoneIn the pale west, and the sun’s rim sank,And clouds arrayed their rank on rankAbout his fading crimson ball:The floor of Emen’s hosting hallWas not more level than the sea,As full of loving phantasy,And with low murmurs we rode on,Where many a trumpet-twisted shellThat in immortal silence sleepsDreaming of her own melting hues,Her golds, her ambers, and her blues,Pierced with soft light the shallowing deeps.But now a wandering land breeze cameAnd a far sound of feathery quires;It seemed to blow from the dying flame,They seemed to sing in the smouldering fires.The horse towards the music raced,Neighing along the lifeless waste;Like sooty fingers, many a treeRose ever out of the warm sea;And they were trembling ceaselessly,As though they all were beating time,Upon the centre of the sun,To that low laughing woodland rhyme.And, now our wandering hours were done,We cantered to the shore, and knewThe reason of the trembling trees:Round every branch the song-birds flew,Or clung thereon like swarming bees;While round the shore a million stoodLike drops of frozen rainbow light,And pondered in a soft vain mood,Upon their shadows in the tide,And told the purple deeps their pride,And murmured snatches of delight;And on the shores were many boatsWith bending sterns and bending bows,And carven figures on their prowsOf bitterns, and fish-eating stoats,And swans with their exultant throats:And where the wood and waters meetWe tied the horse in a leafy clump,And Niamh blew three merry notesOut of a little silver trump;And then an answering whisper flewOver the bare and woody land,A whisper of impetuous feet,And ever nearer, nearer grew;And from the woods rushed out a bandOf men and maidens, hand in hand,And singing, singing altogether;Their brows were white as fragrant milk,Their cloaks made out of yellow silk,And trimmed with many a crimson feather:And when they saw the cloak I woreWas dim with mire of a mortal shore,They fingered it and gazed on meAnd laughed like murmurs of the sea;But Niamh with a swift distressBid them away and hold their peace;And when they heard her voice they ranAnd knelt them, every maid and man,And kissed, as they would never cease,Her pearl-pale hand and the hem of her dress.She bade them bring us to the hallWhere Aengus dreams, from sun to sun,A Druid dream of the end of daysWhen the stars are to wane and the world be done.They led us by long and shadowy waysWhere drops of dew in myriads fall,And tangled creepers every hourBlossom in some new crimson flower,And once a sudden laughter sprangFrom all their lips, and once they sangTogether, while the dark woods rang,And made in all their distant parts,With boom of bees in honey marts,A rumour of delighted hearts.And once a maiden by my sideGave me a harp, and bid me sing,And touch the laughing silver string;But when I sang of human joyA sorrow wrapped each merry face,And, Patric! by your beard, they wept,Until one came, a tearful boy;‘A sadder creature never steptThan this strange human bard,’ he cried;And caught the silver harp away,And, weeping over the white strings, hurledIt down in a leaf-hid hollow placeThat kept dim waters from the sky;And each one said with a long, long sigh,‘O saddest harp in all the world,Sleep there till the moon and the stars die!’And now still sad we came to whereA beautiful young man dreamed withinA house of wattles, clay, and skin;One hand upheld his beardless chin,And one a sceptre flashing outWild flames of red and gold and blue,Like to a merry wandering routOf dancers leaping in the air;And men and maidens knelt them thereAnd showed their eyes with teardrops dim,And with low murmurs prayed to him,And kissed the sceptre with red lips,And touched it with their finger-tips.He held that flashing sceptre up.‘Joy drowns the twilight in the dew,And fills with stars night’s purple cup,And wakes the sluggard seeds of corn,And stirs the young kid’s budding horn,And makes the infant ferns unwrap,And for the peewit paints his cap,And rolls along the unwieldy sun,And makes the little planets run:And if joy were not on the earth,There were an end of change and birth,And earth and heaven and hell would die,And in some gloomy barrow lieFolded like a frozen fly;Then mock at Death and Time with glancesAnd waving arms and wandering dances.‘Men’s hearts of old were drops of flameThat from the saffron morning came,Or drops of silver joy that fellOut of the moon’s pale twisted shell;But now hearts cry that hearts are slaves,And toss and turn in narrow caves;But here there is nor law nor rule,Nor have hands held a weary tool;And here there is nor Change nor Death,But only kind and merry breath,For joy is God and God is joy.’With one long glance on maid and boyAnd the pale blossom of the moon,He fell into a Druid swoon.And in a wild and sudden danceWe mocked at Time and Fate and Chance,And swept out of the wattled hallAnd came to where the dewdrops fallAmong the foamdrops of the sea,And there we hushed the revelry;And, gathering on our brows a frown,Bent all our swaying bodies down,And to the waves that glimmer byThat slooping green De Danaan sodSang, ‘God is joy and joy is God,And things that have grown sad are wicked,And things that fear the dawn of the morrow,Or the gray wandering osprey Sorrow.’We danced to where in the winding thicketThe damask roses, bloom on bloom,Like crimson meteors hang in the gloom,And bending over them softly said,Bending over them in the dance,With a swift and friendly glanceFrom dewy eyes: ‘Upon the deadFall the leaves of other roses,On the dead dim earth encloses:But never, never on our graves,Heaped beside the glimmering waves,Shall fall the leaves of damask roses.For neither Death nor Change comes near us,And all listless hours fear us,And we fear no dawning morrow,Nor the gray wandering osprey Sorrow.’The dance wound through the windless woods;The ever-summered solitudes;Until the tossing arms grew stillUpon the woody central hill;And, gathered in a panting band,We flung on high each waving hand,And sang unto the starry broods:In our raised eyes there flashed a glowOf milky brightness to and froAs thus our song arose: ‘You stars,Across your wandering ruby carsShake the loose reins: you slaves of God,He rules you with an iron rod,He holds you with an iron bond,Each one woven to the other,Each one woven to his brotherLike bubbles in a frozen pond;But we in a lonely land abideUnchainable as the dim tide,With hearts that know nor law nor rule,And hands that hold no wearisome tool;Folded in love that fears no morrow,Nor the gray wandering osprey Sorrow.’O Patric! for a hundred yearsI chased upon that woody shoreThe deer, the badger, and the boar.O Patric! for a hundred yearsAt evening on the glimmering sands,Beside the piled-up hunting spears,These now outworn and withered handsWrestled among the island bands.O Patric! for a hundred yearsWe went a-fishing in long boatsWith bending sterns and bending bows,And carven figures on their prowsOf bitterns and fish-eating stoats.O Patric! for a hundred yearsThe gentle Niamh was my wife;But now two things devour my life;The things that most of all I hate:Fasting and prayers.S. PATRICTell on.OISINYes, yes,For these were ancient Oisin’s fateLoosed long ago from heaven’s gate,For his last days to lie in wait.When one day by the shore I stood,I drew out of the numberlessWhite flowers of the foam a staff of woodFrom some dead warrior’s broken lance:I turned it in my hands; the stainsOf war were on it, and I wept,Remembering how the Fenians steptAlong the blood-bedabbled plains,Equal to good or grievous chance:Thereon young Niamh softly cameAnd caught my hands, but spake no wordSave only many times my name,In murmurs, like a frighted bird.We passed by woods, and lawns of clover,And found the horse and bridled him,For we knew well the old was over.I heard one say ‘his eyes grow dimWith all the ancient sorrow of men’;And wrapped in dreams rode out againWith hoofs of the pale findrinnyOver the glimmering purple sea:Under the golden evening light.The immortals moved among the fountainsBy rivers and the woods’ old night;Some danced like shadows on the mountains,Some wandered ever hand in hand,Or sat in dreams on the pale strand;Each forehead like an obscure starBent down above each hooked knee:And sang, and with a dreamy gazeWatched where the sun in a saffron blazeWas slumbering half in the sea ways;And, as they sang, the painted birdsKept time with their bright wings and feet;Like drops of honey came their words,But fainter than a young lamb’s bleat.‘An old man stirs the fire to a blaze,In the house of a child, of a friend, of a brother;He has over-lingered his welcome; the days,Grown desolate, whisper and sigh to each other;He hears the storm in the chimney above,And bends to the fire and shakes with the cold,While his heart still dreams of battle and love,And the cry of the hounds on the hills of old.‘But we are apart in the grassy places,Where care cannot trouble the least of our days,Or the softness of youth be gone from our faces,Or love’s first tenderness die in our gaze.The hare grows old as she plays in the sunAnd gazes around her with eyes of brightness;Before the swift things that she dreamed of were doneShe limps along in an aged whiteness;A storm of birds in the Asian treesLike tulips in the air a-winging,And the gentle waves of the summer seas,That raise their heads and wander singing,Must murmur at last “unjust, unjust”;And “my speed is a weariness,” falters the mouse;And the kingfisher turns to a ball of dust,And the roof falls in of his tunnelled house.But the love-dew dims our eyes till the dayWhen God shall come from the sea with a sighAnd bid the stars drop down from the sky,And the moon like a pale rose wither away.’