HE REMEMBERS FORGOTTEN BEAUTY
by: William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
- HEN my arms wrap you round I press
- My heart upon the loveliness
- That has long faded from the world;
- The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
- In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
- The love-tales wrought with silken thread
- By dreaming ladies upon cloth
- That has made fat the murderous moth;
- The roses that of old time were
- Woven by ladies in their hair,
- The dew-cold lilies ladies bore
- Through many a sacred corridor
- Where such grey clouds of incense rose
- That only God's eyes did not close:
- For that pale breast and lingering hand
- Come from a more dream-heavy land,
- A more dream-heavy hour than this;
- And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
- I hear white Beauty sighing, too,
- For hours when all must fade like dew,
- But flame on flame, and deep on deep,
- Throne over throne where in half sleep,
- Their swords upon their iron knees,
- Brood her high lonely mysteries.
"He Remembers Forgotten Beauty"
is reprinted from The Wind Among the Reeds. W.B. Yeats.
London: Elkin Mathews, 1899. |
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