Read "Tom o'Roughley" by W.B. Yeats online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
'Though logic choppers rule the town, / And every man and maid and boy / Has marked a distant object down, / An aimless joy is a pure joy,' / Or so did Tom O'Roughley say / That saw the surges running by, / 'And wisdom is a butterfly / And not a gloomy bird of prey.
'If little planned is little sinned / But little need the grave distress.
What's dying but a second wind?
How but in zigzag wantonness / Could trumpeter Michael be so brave? ' / Or something of that sort he said, / 'And if my dearest friend were dead / I'd dance a measure on his grave. '