The Rose of the World

Here’s presenting to you another poem by W. B. Yeats -

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 heart to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.

wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwW. B. Yeats

OCBC Singapore Theatre Festival

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He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Most people have probably heard me gush about this poem by W. B. Yeats at some time or another. Well, I am not sorry. It is, in my opinion, the best love poem I've ever read - so simple yet extensive - and even now, my heart melts every time I read it. So to those whom I haven't pestered, here is the beauty:

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heaven's 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 you feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwW. B. Yeats