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William Butler Yeats - Two Songs From A Play
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I

I saw a staring virgin stand
Where holy Dionysus died,
And tear the heart out of his side.
And lay the heart upon her hand
And bear that beating heart away;
Of Magnus Annus at the spring,
As though God`s death were but a play.

Another Troy must rise and set,
Another lineage feed the crow,
Another Argo`s painted prow
Drive to a flashier bauble yet.
The Roman Empire stood appalled:
It dropped the reins of peace and war
When that fierce virgin and her Star
Out of the fabulous darkness called.

               II

In pity for man`s darkening thought
He walked that room and issued thence
In Galilean turbulence;
The Babylonian starlight brought
A fabulous, formless darkness in;
Odour of blood when Christ was slain
Made all platonic tolerance vain
And vain all Doric discipline.

Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.
Love`s pleasure drives his love away,
The painter`s brush consumes his dreams;
The herald`s cry, the soldier`s tread
Exhaust his glory and his might:
Whatever flames upon the night
Man`s own resinous heart has fed.
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