W. B. Yeats

Tom O’Roughley

‘THOUGH logic choppers rule the town,    
And every man and maid and boy    
Has marked a distant object down,    
An aimless joy is a pure joy,’    
Or so did Tom O’Roughley say    
That saw the surges running by,    
‘And wisdom is a butterfly    
And not a gloomy bird of prey.    
 
‘If little planned is little sinned    
But little need the grave distress.  
What’s dying but a second wind?    
How but in zigzag wantonness    
Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?’    
Or something of that sort he said,    
‘And if my dearest friend were dead  
I’d dance a measure on his grave.’

The Wild Swans at Coole. 1919.

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