The Lady's Third Song

When you and my true lover meet
And he plays tunes between your feet.
Speak no evil of the soul,
Nor think that body is the whole,
For I that am his daylight lady
Know worse evil of the body;
But in honour split his love
Till either neither have enough,
That I may hear if we should kiss
A contrapuntal serpent hiss,
You, should hand explore a thigh,
All the labouring heavens sigh.

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and was co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

William Butler Yeats

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William Butler Yeats, Simple Poetry

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William Butler Yeats, Simple Poetry

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William Butler Yeats, Simple Poetry

English

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The Lady's Second Song

What sort of man is coming
To lie between your feet?
What matter, we are but women.
Wash; make your body sweet;
I have cupboards of dried fragrance.
I can strew the sheet.
i(The Lord have mercy upon us.)

He shall love my soul as though
Body were not at all,
He shall love your body
Untroubled by the soul,
Love cram love's two divisions
Yet keep his substance whole.
i(The Lord have mercy upon us.)

Soul must learn a love that is
proper to my breast,
Limbs a Love in common
With every noble beast.
If soul may look and body touch,
Which is the more blest?
i(The Lord have mercy upon us.)

William Butler Yeats

The Lady's First Song

I turn round
Like a dumb beast in a show.
Neither know what I am
Nor where I go,
My language beaten
Into one name;
I am in love
And that is my shame.
What hurts the soul
My soul adores,
No better than a beast
Upon all fours.

William Butler Yeats

The Lover Speaks To The Hearers Of His Songs In Coming Days

O women, kneeling by your altar-rails long hence,
When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,
And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air
And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense;
Bend down and pray for all that sin I wove in song,
Till the Attorney for Lost Souls cry her sweet cry,
And.call to my beloved and me: "No longer fly
Amid the hovering, piteouS, penitential throng.

William Butler Yeats

The Three Bushes

Said lady once to lover,
"None can rely upon
A love that lacks its proper food;
And if your love were gone
How could you sing those songs of love?
I should be blamed, young man.
i(O my dear, O my dear.)

Have no lit candles in your room,"
That lovely lady said,
"That I at midnight by the clock
May creep into your bed,
For if I saw myself creep in
I think I should drop dead."
i(O my dear, O my dear.)

"I love a man in secret,
Dear chambermaid," said she.
"I know that I must drop down dead
If he stop loving me,
Yet what could I but drop down dead
If I lost my chastity?
i(O my dear, O my dear.)

"So you must lie beside him
And let him think me there.
And maybe we are all the same
Where no candles are,
An...

William Butler Yeats

Extracts From An Opera

O! were I one of the Olympian twelve,
Their godships should pass this into law,
That when a man doth set himself in toil
After some beauty veiled far away,
Each step he took should make his lady's hand
More soft, more white, and her fair cheek more fair;
And for each briar-berry he might eat,
A kiss should bud upon the tree of love,
And pulp and ripen richer every hour,
To melt away upon the traveller's lips.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1.
The sun, with his great eye,
Sees not so much as I;
And the moon, all silve-proud,
Might as well be in a cloud.

2.
And O the spring the spring!
I lead the life of a king!
Couch'd in the teeming grass,
I spy each pretty lass.

3.
I look where no one dares,
And I st...

John Keats

The Ragged Wood

O hurry where by water among the trees
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have but looked upon their images --
Would none had ever loved but you and I!
Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood? --
O that none ever loved but you and I!
O hurry to the ragged wood, for there
I will drive all those lovers out and cry --
O my share of the world, O yellow hair!
No one has ever loved but you and I.

William Butler Yeats