Read "King and no King" by W.B. Yeats online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Would it were anything but merely voice! " / The No King cried who after that was King, / Because he had not heard of anything / That balanced with a word is more than noise; / Yet Old Romance being kind, let him prevail / Somewhere or somehow that I have forgot, / Though he'd but cannon -- Whereas we that had thought / To have lit upon as clean and sweet a tale / Have been defeated by that pledge you gave / In momentary anger long ago; / And I that have not your faith, how shall I know / That in the blinding light beyond the grave / We'll find so good a thing as that we have lost? / The hourly kindness, the day's common speech, / The habitual content of each with each / When neither soul nor body has been crossed.