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Home  »  Responsibilities and Other Poems  »  47. Upon a House shaken by the Land Agitation

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). Responsibilities and Other Poems. 1916.

47. Upon a House shaken by the Land Agitation

HOW should the world be luckier if this house,

Where passion and precision have been one

Time out of mind, became too ruinous

To breed the lidless eye that loves the sun?

And the sweet laughing eagle thoughts that grow

Where wings have memory of wings, and all

That comes of the best knit to the best? Although

Mean roof-trees were the sturdier for its fall,

How should their luck run high enough to reach

The gifts that govern men, and after these

To gradual Time’s last gift, a written speech

Wrought of high laughter, loveliness and ease?