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Monday, June 7, 2010

On Vanity

THE TWO TREES
by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

      BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart,
      The holy tree is growing there;
      From joy the holy branches start,
      And all the trembling flowers they bear.
      The changing colours of its fruit
      Have dowered the stars with merry light;
      The surety of its hidden root
      Has planted quiet in the night;
      The shaking of its leafy head
      Has given the waves their melody,
      And made my lips and music wed,
      Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
      There the Loves a circle go,
      The flaming circle of our days,
      Gyring, spiring to and fro
      In those great ignorant leafy ways;
      Remembering all that shaken hair
      And how the wingèd sandals dart,
      Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
      Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
       
      Gaze no more in the bitter glass
      The demons, with their subtle guile,
      Lift up before us when they pass,
      Or only gaze a little while;
      For there a fatal image grows
      That the stormy night receives,
      Roots half hidden under snows,
      Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
      For all things turn to barrenness
      In the dim glass the demons hold,
      The glass of outer weariness,
      Made when God slept in times of old.
      There, through the broken branches, go
      The ravens of unresting thought;
      Flying, crying, to and fro,
      Cruel claw and hungry throat,
      Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
      And shake their ragged wings; alas!
      Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
      Gaze no more in the bitter glass.









"The Two Trees" is reprinted from The Rose. W.B. Yeats. 1893.

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