Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO A SHADE, by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO A SHADE, by                 Poet's Biography
First Line: If you have revisited the town, thin shade
Last Line: Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.
Alternate Author Name(s): Yeats, W. B.
Subject(s): Ghosts; Ireland - Rebellions; Parnell, Charles Stewart (1846-1891); Supernatural


IF you have revisited the town, thin Shade,
Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent
To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
When grey gulls flit about instead of men,
And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
Let these content you and be gone again;
For they are at their old tricks yet.

A man
Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought
In his full hands what, had they only known,
Had given their children's children loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
And insult heaped upon him for his pains,
And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
Your enemy, an old foul mouth, had set
The pack upon him.

Go, unquiet wanderer,
And gather the Glasnevin coverlet
About your head till the dust stops your ear,
The time for you to taste of that salt breath
And listen at the corners has not come;
You had enough of sorrow before death --
Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.





Discover our poem explanations - click here!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net