Poetry Corner – He Remembers Forgotten Beauty

 WHEN my arms wrap you round I press          
 My heart upon the loveliness    
 That has long faded from the world;     
 The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled     
 In shadowy pools, when armies fled;     
 The love-tales wove with silken thread             
 By dreaming ladies upon cloth             
 That has made fat the murderous moth;            
 The roses that of old time were             
 Woven by ladies in their hair,   
 The dew-cold lilies ladies bore             
 Through many a sacred corridor           
 Where such gray clouds of incense rose           
 That only the gods’ eyes did not close:             
 For that pale breast and lingering hand              
 Come from a more dream-heavy land,             
 A more dream-heavy hour than this;    
 And when you sigh from kiss to kiss    
 I hear white Beauty sighing, too,           
 For hours when all must fade like dew             
 But flame on flame, deep under deep,  
 Throne over throne, where in half sleep           
 Their swords upon their iron knees       
 Brood her high lonely mysteries. 

- William Butler Yeats