* 1 * The Rose of the World (William Butler Yeats)

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.

We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam the sky,
Lives on his lonely face.

Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hears to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.