Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Supernatural Songs (Author: William Butler Yeats)

part 8

Whence had they come?

  1. Eternity is passion, girl or boy
    Cry at the onset of their sexual joy
    'For ever and for ever'; then awake
    Ignorant what Dramatis personae spake;
    A passion-driven exultant man sings out
    Sentences that he has never thought;
    The Flagellant lashes those submissive loins
    Ignorant what that dramatist enjoins,
    What master made the lash. Whence had they come,
    The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome?
    What sacred drama through her body heaved
    When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?

    2. p.288