22 March 2007

William Butler Yeats

[from "The Hour Before Dawn," Responsibilities]

‘You cry aloud, O would ’twere spring
Or that the wind would shift a point,
And do not know that you would bring,
If time were suppler in the joint,
Neither the spring nor the south wind
But the hour when you shall pass away
And leave no smoking wick behind,
For all life longs for the Last Day
And there's no man but cocks his ear
To know when Michael's trumpet cries
That flesh and bone may disappear,
And souls as if they were but sighs,
And there be nothing but God left;
But I alone being blesséd keep
Like some old rabbit to my cleft
And wait Him in a drunken sleep.’

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