FAR-OFF, most secret, and inviolate Rose, <br />Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those <br />Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, <br />Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir <br />And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep <br />Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep <br />Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold <br />The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold <br />Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes <br />Saw the pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise <br />In Druid vapour and make the torches dim; <br />Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him <br />Who met Fand walking among flaming dew <br />By a grey shore where the wind never blew, <br />And lost the world and Emer for a kiss; <br />And him who drove the gods out of their liss, <br />And till a hundred moms had flowered red <br />Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead; <br />And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown <br />And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown <br />Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods: <br />And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods, <br />And sought through lands and islands numberless years, <br />Until he found, with laughter and with tears, <br />A woman of so shining loveliness <br />That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress, <br />A little stolen tress. I, too, await <br />The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. <br />When shall the stars be blown about the sky, <br />Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die? <br />Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows, <br />Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?<br /><br />William Butler Yeats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-secret-rose/
