‘She will change,’ I cried.
‘Into a withered crone.’
The heart in my side,
That so still had lain,
In noble rage replied

Dry timber under that rich foliage
At wine-dark midnight in the sacre
Too old for a man’s love I stood
Imagining men. Imagining that I
A greater with a lesser pang assua

Once, when midnight smote the air,
Eunuchs ran through Hell and met
From thoroughfare to thoroughfare,
While that great Juan galloped by
And like these to rail and sweat

I dreamed that I stood in a valle
For happy lovers passed two by two
And I dreamed my lost love came s
With her cloud-pale eyelids fallin
I cried in my dream ‘O women bid

THE woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy
Yet still she turns her restless h

I, proclaiming that there is
Among birds or beasts or men
One that is perfect or at peace.
Danced on Cruachan’s windy plain,
Upon Cro-patrick sang aloud;

A SPECKLED cat and a tame hare
Eat at my hearthstone
And sleep there;
And both look up to me alone
For learning and defence

BIRD sighs for the air,
Thought for I know not where,
For the womb the seed sighs.
Now sinks the same rest
On mind, on nest,

I RANTED to the knave and fool,
But outgrew that school,
Would transform the part,
Fit audience found, but cannot rul
My fanatic heart.

I have old women’s secrets now
That had those of the young;
Madge tells me what I dared not t
When my blood was strong,
And what had drowned a lover once