A month with Yeats: Day Nine

The Yeats quote today is taken from ‘The Rose of the World’.

 

‘Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,

And Usna’s children died.’ W.B. Yeats

 

The world grows dark

 

They have gone into the dark and cold

All those whose stories, by the fire told,

Have walked barefoot beneath this sky.

We, the listeners by the dancing flames,

Had thought to hear the battle’s roar,

And wept to share a woman’s grief.

No regrets, we say to soothe the loss,

For those days when life hung by a thread,

Or rolling dice, a sword thrust missed,

A handful of bright berries red.

So we walk with uniformed step,

The roadways paved in dullest grey,

And never raise eyes to the sky,

To see the hawk with yellow eye,

Plunge for the mouse about to die.