Under The Moon

by William Butler Yeats

Under The Moon

I HAVE no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde,

Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle,

Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while;

Nor Uladh, when Naoise had thrown a sail upon the wind;

Nor lands that seem too dim to be burdens on the heart:

Land-under-Wave, where out of the moon's light and the sun's

Seven old sisters wind the threads of the long-lived ones,

Land-of-the-Tower, where Aengus has thrown the gates apart,

And Wood-of-Wonders, where one kills an ox at dawn,

To find it when night falls laid on a golden bier.

Therein are many queens like Branwen and Guinevere;

And Niamh and Laban and Fand, who could change to an otter or fawn,

And the wood-woman, whose lover was changed to a blue-eyed hawk;

And whether I go in my dreams by woodland, or dun, or shore,

Or on the unpeopled waves with kings to pull at the oar,

I hear the harp-string praise them, or hear their mournful talk.

Because of something told under the famished horn

Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day,

To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dis may,

Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne. 

Statistics 

'THOSE Platonists are a curse,' he said,

'God's fire upon the wane,

A diagram hung there instead,

More women born than men.' 

The Rose Of The World 

WHO dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,

Mournful that no new wonder may betide,

Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,

And Usna's children died.

We and the labouring world are passing by:

Amid men's souls, that waver and give place

Like the pale waters in their wintry race,

Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,

Lives on this lonely face.

Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:

Before you were, or any hearts to beat,

Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;

He made the world to be a grassy road

Before her wandering feet.