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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