The Players Ask for a Blessing on the Psalteries and on Themselves (Yeats)
Yeats [by George Charles Beresford, 1911]
The Players Ask for a Blessing on the Psalteries and on Themselves
by William Butler Yeats
from In the Seven Woods (1904)
Three Voices [together]:
The mouths that speak, the notes and strings,
O masters of the glittering town!
O! lay the shrilly trumpet down,
Though drunken with the flags that sway
Over the ramparts and the towers,
And with the waving of your wings.
First Voice:
One gathers up his purple gown;
One leans and mutters by the wall—
He dreads the weight of mortal hours.
Second Voice:
Like plovers that have heard the call.
Third voice:
O kinsmen bless the hands that play.
The notes they waken shall live on
When all this heavy history's done;
Our hands, our hands must ebb away.
Three Voices [together]:
But bless our hands that ebb away.
* * * * *
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Posted by Jesus Crisis at 11/18/2011 7:29 AM 
Categories: British, Poetry, Irish, Yeats (William Butler), 1900s
Tags: In the Seven Woods 1904 W.B. Yeats William Butler Yeats Irish Literature Irish Poetry British Literature British Poetry
Categories: British, Poetry, Irish, Yeats (William Butler), 1900s
Tags: In the Seven Woods 1904 W.B. Yeats William Butler Yeats Irish Literature Irish Poetry British Literature British Poetry
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