W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). The Wind Among the Reeds. 1899.

37. Mongan thinks of his past Greatness

I HAVE drunk ale from the Country of the Young

And weep because I know all things now:

I have been a hazel tree and they hung

The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough

Among my leaves in times out of mind:

I became a rush that horses tread:

I became a man, a hater of the wind,

Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head

Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair

Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;

Although the rushes and the fowl of the air

Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.