To A Shade

William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)



IF you have revisited the town, thin Shade,
Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent
To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
When grey gulls flit about instead of men,
And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
Let these content you and be gone again;
For they are at their old tricks yet.
A man
Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought
In his full hands what, had they only known,
Had given their children's children loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
And instilt heaped upon him for his pains,
And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
Your enemy, an old fotil mouth, had set
The pack upon him.
Go, unquiet wanderer,
And gather the Glasnevin coverlet
About your head till the dust stops your ear,
The time for you to taste of that Salt breath
And listen at the corners has not come;
You had enough of sorrow before death --
Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

57 sec read
161

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABACDEDEFGHIHJKJKFLMANOPOQ
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,003
Words 190
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 26

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. more…

All William Butler Yeats poems | William Butler Yeats Books

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