Read "Suggested by a Picture of a Black Centaur" by W.B. Yeats online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood, / Even where the horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.
I knew that horse play, knew it for a murderous thing.
What wholesome sun has ripened is wholesome food to eat / And that alone, yet I being driven half insane / Because of some green wing, gathered old mummy wheat / In the mad abstract dark and ground it grain by grain / And after baked it slowly in an oven; but now / I bring full flavoured wine out of a barrel found / Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew / When Alexander's empire past, they slept so sound.
Stretch out your limbs and sleep a long Saturnian sleep; / I have loved you better than my soul for all my words, / And there is none so fit to keep a watch and keep / Unwearied eyes upon those horrible green birds.