Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition

Meditations in Time of Civil War (Author: William Butler Yeats)

part 4

My Descendants

1. Having inherited a vigorous mind
   From my old fathers, I must nourish dreams
   And leave a woman and a man behind
   As vigorous of mind, and yet it seems
   Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
   Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
   But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
   And there's but common greenness after that.
   And what if my descendants lose the flower
   Through natural declension of the soul,
   Through too much business with the passing hour,
   Through too much play, or marriage with a fool?
   May this laborious stair and this stark tower
   Become a roofless ruin that the owl
   May build in the cracked masonry and cry
   Her desolation to the desolate sky.

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   p.22

   The primum Mobile that fashioned us
   Has made the very owls in circles move;
   And I, that count myself most prosperous,
   Seeing that love and friendship are enough,
   For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house
   And decked and altered it for a girl's love,
   And know whatever flourish and decline
   These stones remain their monument and mine.