A Month with Yeats: Day Nineteen

Today’s quote is a second one from ‘The Valley of the Black Pig’.

 

‘We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore,

The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,

Being weary of the world’s empires, bow down to you,

Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.’—W.B. Yeats

 

Turning Back the Black Tide

 

We have followed those who brandished weapons high,

A sword, a cross, a curse, a death dark threat,

And waded through their rising blood red tide,

And holy peace has never fallen yet.

We have watched them build their monuments to death,

And wept at banners spread in poppy rain,

Our stones and trees abandoned on the hill,

Among the ashes of our stories wild, profane.

Perhaps when sunset’s light begins to fade,

On the crumbling ruins of cold glory lost,

We will seek the quiet path our elders trod,

And light a fire in this creeping frost.

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