Know, that I would accounted be <br />True brother of a company <br />That sang, to sweeten Ireland's wrong, <br />Ballad and story, rann and song; <br />Nor be I any less of them, <br />Because the red-rose-bordered hem <br />Of her, whose history began <br />Before God made the angelic clan, <br />Trails all about the written page. <br />When Time began to rant and rage <br />The measure of her flying feet <br />Made Ireland's heart hegin to beat; <br />And Time bade all his candles flare <br />To light a measure here and there; <br />And may the thoughts of Ireland brood <br />Upon a measured guietude. <br />Nor may I less be counted one <br />With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson, <br />Because, to him who ponders well, <br />My rhymes more than their rhyming tell <br />Of things discovered in the deep, <br />Where only body's laid asleep. <br />For the elemental creatures go <br />About my table to and fro, <br />That hurry from unmeasured mind <br />To rant and rage in flood and wind, <br />Yet he who treads in measured ways <br />May surely barter gaze for gaze. <br />Man ever journeys on with them <br />After the red-rose-bordered hem. <br />Ah, faerics, dancing under the moon, <br />A Druid land, a Druid tune.! <br />While stiIl I may, I write for you <br />The love I lived, the dream I knew. <br />From our birthday, until we die, <br />Is but the winking of an eye; <br />And we, our singing and our love, <br />What measurer Time has lit above, <br />And all benighted things that go <br />About my table to and fro, <br />Are passing on to where may be, <br />In truth's consuming ecstasy, <br />No place for love and dream at all; <br />For God goes by with white footfall. <br />I cast my heart into my rhymes, <br />That you, in the dim coming times, <br />May know how my heart went with them <br />After the red-rose-bordered hem.<br /><br />William Butler Yeats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-ireland-in-the-coming-times/
