Sailing to Byzantium
W. B. Yeats
1865–1939
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The Falling of the Leaves
Autumn is over the long leaves that love us, And over the mice in the barley sheaves; Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us, And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.
The hour of the waning of love has beset us, And weary and worn are our sad souls now; Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us, With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.
The Stolen Child
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats; There we’ve hid our faery vats, Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car, In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star, We seek for slumbering trout And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams; Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast, Or see the brown mice bob Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child, To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.