Read "The Rose of the World" by W.B. Yeats online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, / Mournful that no new wonder may betide, / Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, / And Usna's children died.
We and the labouring world are passing by: / Amid men's souls, that waver and give place, / Like the pale waters in their wintry race, / Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, / Lives on this lonely face.
Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode: / Before you were, or any hearts to beat, / Weary and kind one lingered by His seat; / He made the world to be a grassy road / Before her wandering feet.