William Butler Yeats: He Mourns For The Change That Has Come Upon Him And His Beloved, And Longs For The End Of The World

William Butler Yeats

(1865-1939)

He Mourns For The Change That Has Come

Upon Him And His Beloved,

And Longs For The End Of The World

Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns?
I have been changed to a hound with one red ear;
I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns,
For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire and fear
Under my feet that they follow you night and day.
A man with a hazel wand came without sound;
He changed me suddenly; I was looking another way;
And now my calling is but the calling of a hound;
And Time and Birth and Change are hurrying by.
I would that the Boar without bristles had come from the West
And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky
And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest.

W.B. Yeats poetry

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