Explore "On Mr. Nettleship's Picture at the Royal Hibernian Academy" by W.B. Yeats on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Yonder the sickle of the moon sails on, / But here the Lioness licks her soft cub / Tender and fearless on her funeral pyre; / Above, saliva dripping from his jaws, / The Lion, the world's great solitary, bends / Lowly the head of his magnificence / And roars, mad with the touch of the unknown, / Not as he shakes the forest; but a cry / Low, long and musical. A dew-drop hung / Bright on a grass blade's under side, might hear / Nor tremble to its fall. The fire sweeps round / Re-shining in his eyes. So ever moves / The flaming circle of the outer Law, / Nor heeds the old, dim protest and the cry / The orb of the most inner living heart / Gives forth. He, the Eternal, works His will.