Read "Michael Robartes Remembers Forgotten Beauty" by W.B. Yeats online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
When my arms wrap you round I press / My heart upon the loveliness / That has long faded from the world; / The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled / In shadowy pools, when armies fled; / The love-tales wove with silken thread / By dreaming ladies upon cloth / That has made fat the murderous moth; / The roses that of old time were / Woven by ladies in their hair, / The dew-cold lilies ladies bore / Through many a sacred corridor / Where such gray clouds of incense rose / That only the gods' eyes did not close: / For that pale breast and lingering hand / Come from a more dream-heavy land, / A more dream-heavy hour than this; / And when you sigh from kiss to kiss / I hear white Beauty sighing, too, / For hours when all must fade like dew / But flame on flame, deep under deep, / Throne over throne, where in half sleep / Their swords upon their iron knees / Brood her high lonely mysteries.