The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 7 (of 8): The Secret Rose. Rosa Alchemica. The Tables of the Law. The Adoration of the Magi. John Sherman and DhoyaYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
General
The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 7 (of 8): The Secret Rose. Rosa Alchemica. The Tables of the Law. The Adoration of the Magi. John Sherman and Dhoya
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
English literature -- Irish authors
Immortal Powers, and that whosoever finds this moment and listens to
the Song shall become like the Immortal Powers themselves; I came back
to Ireland and asked the fairy men, and the cow-doctors, if they knew
when this moment was; but though all had heard of it, there was none
could find the moment upon the hour-glass. So I gave myself to magic,
and spent my life in fasting and in labour that I might bring the Gods
and the Fairies to my side; and now at last one of the Fairies has told
me that the moment is at hand. One, who wore a red cap and whose lips
were white with the froth of the new milk, whispered it into my ear.
To-morrow, a little before the close of the first hour after dawn, I
shall find the moment, and then I will go away to a southern land and
build myself a palace of white marble amid orange trees, and gather the
brave and the beautiful about me, and enter into the eternal kingdom
of my youth. But, that I may hear the whole Song, I was told by the
little fellow with the froth of the new milk on his lips, that you must
bring great masses of green boughs and pile them about the door and the
window of my room; and you must put fresh green rushes upon the floor,
and cover the table and the rushes with the roses and the lilies of the
monks. You must do this to-night, and in the morning at the end of the
first hour after dawn, you must come and find me.’
‘Will you be quite young then?’ said the boy.
‘I will be as young then as you are, but now I am still old and tired,
and you must help me to my chair and to my books.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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