Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
A Selection from the Love Poetry of William Butler Yeats (Author: William Butler Yeats)

poem 2

The Wind among the Reeds 1892–1897

The Lover tells of the Rose in his Heart

  1. All things uncomely and broken, all things worn and old,
    The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
    The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
    Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
  2. The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
    I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
    With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold
    For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

The Lover mourns for the loss of Love

  1. Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,
    I had a beautiful friend
    And dreamed that the old despair
    Would end in love in the end:
    She looked in my heart one day
    And saw your image was there;
    She has gone weeping away.

p.5

He mourns for the change that has come upon him and his beloved and longs for the end of the world

  1. Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns!
    I have been changed to a hound with one red ear;
    I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns,
    For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire and fear
    Under my feet that they follow you night and day.
    A man with a hazel wand came without sound;
    He changed me suddenly; I was looking another way;
    And now my calling is but the calling of a hound;
    And Time and Birth and Change are hurrying by.
    I would that the Boar without bristles had come from the West
    And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky
    And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest.

He tells of a valley full of lovers

  1. I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,
    For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;
    And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood
    With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:
    I cried in my dream, O women, bid the young men lay
    Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair,
    Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair
    Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away.

p.6

He remembers forgotten Beauty

  1. When 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 gray clouds of incense rose
    That only the gods' 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,
    All but the flames, and deep on deep.
    Throne over throne where in half sleep.
    Their swords upon their iron knees,
    Brood her high lonely mysteries.

p.7

He bids his beloved be at peace

  1. I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,
    Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white;
    The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night,
    The East her hidden joy before the morning break,
    The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away,
    The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire:
    O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire,
    The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay:
    Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat
    Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,
    Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,
    And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet.

He gives his beloved certain rhymes

  1. Fasten your hair with a golden pin,
    And bind up every wandering tress;
    I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
    It worked at them, day out, day in,
    Building a sorrowful loveliness
    Out of the battles of old times.
  2. You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,
    And bind up your long hair and sigh;
    And all men's hearts must burn and beat;
    And candle-like foam on the dim sand,
    And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,
    Live but to light your passing feet.

p.8

He tells of the perfect Beauty

  1. O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
    The poets labouring all their days
    To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
    Are overthrown by a woman's gaze
    And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:
    And therefore my heart will bow, when dew
    Is dropping sleep, until God burn time,
    Before the unlabouring stars and you.

He reproves the curlew

  1. O, curlew, cry no more in the air,
    Or only to the waters in the West;
    Because your crying brings to my mind
    Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair
    That was shaken out over my breast:
    There is enough evil in the crying of wind.

The travail of passion

  1. When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide;
    When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay;
    Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way
    Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side,
    The hyssop-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kidron stream.
    We will bend down and loosen our hair over you,
    That it may drop faint perfume, and be heavy with dew,
    Lilies of death-pale hope, roses of passionate dream.

p.9

The lover asks forgiveness because of his many moods

  1. If this importunate heart trouble your peace
    With words lighter than air,
    Or hopes that in mere hoping flicker and cease;
    Crumple the rose in your hair;
    And cover your lips with odorous twilight and say,
    '0 hearts of wind-blown flame!
    O Winds, elder than changing of night and day,
    That murmuring and longing came
    From marble cities loud with tabors of old
    In dove-gray faery lands;
    From battle banners, fold upon purple fold,
    Queens wrought with glimmering hands;
    That saw young Niamh hover with love-lorn face
    Above the wandering tide;
    And lingered in the hidden desolate place
    Where the last Phoenix died,
    And wrapped the flames above his holy head;
    And still murmur and long:
    O Piteous Hearts, changing till change be dead
    In a tumultuous song:'
    And cover the pale blossoms of your breast
    With your dim heavy hair.
    And trouble with a sigh for all things longing for rest
    The odorous twilight there.

p.10

The lover pleads with his friend for old friends

  1. Though you are in your shining days,
    Voices among the crowd
    And new friends busy with your praise,
    Be not unkind or proud,
    But think about old friends the most:
    Time's bitter flood will rise,
    Your beauty perish and be lost
    For all eyes but these eyes.

He wishes his beloved were dead

  1. Were you but lying cold and dead,
    And lights were paling out of the West,
    You would come hither, and bend your head,
    And I would lay my head on your breast;
    And you would murmur tender words,
    Forgiving me, because you were dead:
    Nor would you rise and hasten away,
    Though you have the will of the wild birds,
    But know your hair was bound and wound
    Above the stars and moon and sun:
    O would, beloved, that you lay
    Under the dock-leaves in the ground,
    While lights were paling one by one.

p.11

A poet to his beloved

  1. I bring you with reverent hands
    The books of my numberless dreams;
    White woman that passion has worn
    As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,
    And with heart more old than the horn
    That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
    White woman with numberless dreams
    I bring you my passionate rhyme.

He wishes for the cloths of heaven

  1. Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
    Enwrought with golden and silver light,
    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
    Of night and light and the half light,
    I would spread the cloths under your feet:
    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
    I have spread my dreams under your feet;
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

p.12