1911 photo of Yeats by George Charles Beresford


Under Saturn
by William Butler Yeats
from Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)

Do not because this day I have grown saturnine
Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought
Because I have no other youth, can make me pine;
For how should I forget the wisdom that you brought,
The comfort that you made? Although my wits have gone
On a fantastic ride, my horse's flanks are spurred
By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen,
And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard,
And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died
Before my time, seem like a vivid memory.
You heard that labouring man who had served my people. He said
Upon the open road, near to the Sligo quay —
No, no, not said, but cried it out — "You have come again,
And surely after twenty years it was time to come."
I am thinking of a child's vow sworn in vain
Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home.

     November 1919



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To read a Jesus Crisis blog about Yeats, visit
Y is for Yeats (my favorite poets from A to Z - volume 25)

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