YOU ask what -- I have found, and far and wide I go: <br />Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, <br />The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, <br />And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen, where are they? <br />And there is an old beggar wandering in his pride -- - <br />His fathers served their fathers before Christ was crucified. <br />O what of that, O what of that, <br />'What is there left to say? <br /> <br />All neighbourly content and easy talk are gone, <br />But there's no good complaining, for money's rant is on. <br />He that's mounting up must on his neighbour mount, <br />And we and all the Muses are things of no account. <br />They have schooling of their own, but I pass their schooling by, <br />What can they know that we know that know the time to die? <br />O what of that, O what of that, <br />What is there left to say? <br /> <br />But there's another knowledge that my heart destroys, <br />As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy's <br />Because it proves that things both can and cannot be; <br />That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company, <br />Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound, <br />That I am still their setvant though all are underground. <br />O what of that, O what of that, <br />What is there left to say? <br />I came on a great house in the middle of the night, <br />Its open lighted doorway and its windows all alight, <br />And all my friends were there and made me welcome too; <br />But I woke in an old ruin that the winds. howled through; <br />And when I pay attention I must out and walk <br />Among the dogs and horses that understand my talk. <br />O what of that, O what of that, <br />What is there left to say?<br /><br />William Butler Yeats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-curse-of-cromwell/
