TO IRELAND IN THE COMING TIMES
by: William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
- NOW, that I would accounted be
- True brother of a company
- That sang, to sweeten Ireland's wrong,
- Ballad and story, rann and song;
- Nor be I any less of them,
- Because the red-rose-bordered hem
- Of her, whose history began
- Before God made the angelic clan,
- Trails all about the written page.
- When Time began to rant and rage
- The measure of her flying feet
- Made Ireland's heart begin to beat;
- And Time bade all his candles flare
- To light a measure here and there;
- And may the thoughts of Ireland brood
- Upon a measured quietude.
-
- Nor may I less be counted one
- With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,
- Because, to him who ponders well,
- My rhymes more than their rhyming tell
- Of things discovered in the deep,
- Where only body's laid asleep.
- For the elemental creatures go
- About my table to and fro,
- That hurry from unmeasured mind
- To rant and rage in flood and wind;
- Yet he who treads in measured ways
- May surely barter gaze for gaze.
- Man ever journeys on with them
- After the red-rose-bordered hem.
- Ah, faeries, dancing under the moon,
- A Druid land, a Druid tune!
-
- While still I may, I write for you
- The 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,
- What measurer Time has lit above,
- And all benighted things that go
- About 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 footfall.
- I cast my heart into my rhymes,
- That you, in the dim coming times,
- May know how my heart went with them
- After the red-rose-bordered hem.
"To Ireland in the Coming Times"
is reprinted from The Rose. W.B. Yeats. 1893. |
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POEMS BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS |
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