Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
I. Natures InfluenceAn Indian Song
William Butler Yeats (18651939)O
Our isle awaits us; on each lea
The pea-hens dance; in crimson feather
A parrot swaying on a tree
Rages at his own image in the enamelled sea.
And Life the sandals of her fleetness,
And sleek young Joy is no more fickle,
And Love is kindly and deceitless,
And all is over save the murmur and the sweetness.
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly, lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands—
Murmuring how far away are all earth’s feverish lands:
Hid in the earth’s most hidden part,
While grows our love an Indian star,
A meteor of the burning heart,
One with the waves that softly round us laugh and dart;
That moans and sighs a hundred days;
How when we die our shades will rove,
Dropping at eve in coral bays
A vapory footfall on the ocean’s sleepy blaze.