Short Poems

They could not shut you out of heaven
Although the sins you'd sinned were seven:

Not all the saints and souls in glory
Could exile you to Purgatory:

For this is true:—they need your eyes
To light the ways of Paradise.

A WILD rose, closed from night and rain,
I kissed as I came over the plain.
May she sleep and dream again
How one who'll roam
Till the clouds come home
Kissed her, laughing, in the rain.

This strange ecclipse, one saies,
Strange wonders doth foretell;
But you whose wives excell,
And love to count their praise,
Shut all your gates, your hedges plant with thornes,
The sun did threat the world this time with hornes.

What others at their eare,
Two pearles Camilla at her nose did weare;
Which Alcon, who nought saw,
(For loue is blinde,) robb'd with a prettie kisse;
But hauing knowne his misse,
And felt what ore hee from that mine did draw,
When shee to charge againe him did desire,
Hee fled, and said, foule water quenched fire.

If I not love you, Villiers, more
Than ever mortal lov'd before;
With such a passion, fix'd and sure,
As ev'n possession could not cure,
Never to cease but with my breath,
May then this bumper be my death.

Love will ever find a way
To turn the darkest night to day:
Out of chaos and mischance,
And every wicked circumstance,
'Twill build itself a home again
Within the hearts of erring men;
But hell is made by its inhabitants

It is a breathless, grey day,
That leaves the golden woods of autumn
Quiet in their own tranquillity,
Stately and beautiful in their decaying.

Wide , blue-white, streams of light
Cross the pale sky at night;
Searchlights swinging high,
Small plane against the sky,
And the moon over the sea.
The arc of these three,
Water, light and wing,
Is an eloquent thing.

I, the poet William Yeats,
With old mill boards and sea-green slates,
And smithy work from the Gort forge,
Restored this tower for my wife George;
And may these characters remain
When all is ruin once again.

Benicia wished me well; I wished her well.
And what I wished her more I may not tell.