Read "The Players Ask for a Blessing on the Psalteries and Themselves" by W.B. Yeats online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Three Voices together / Hurry to bless the hands that play, / The mouths that speak, the notes and strings, / O masters of the glittering town!
O! lay the shrilly trumpet down, / Though drunken with the flags that sway / Over the ramparts and the towers, / And with the waving of your wings.
First Voice / Maybe they linger by the way; / One gathers up his purple gown; / One leans and mutters by the wall; / He dreads the weight of mortal hours.
Second Voice / O no, O no, they hurry down / Like plovers that have heard the call.
Third Voice / O, kinsmen of the Three in One, / O, kinsmen bless the hands that play.
The notes they waken shall live on / When all this heavy history's done.
Our hands, our hands must ebb away.
Three Voices together / The proud and careless notes live on / But bless our hands that ebb away.