The Secret Rose

Yeats, William Butler (1865 - 1939)

Original Text

Yeats, William Butler. W. B. Yeats: Selected Poetry: 33-34. Ed. by A. Norman Jeffares. London: Macmillan, 1968.

1Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,

2Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those

3Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,

4Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir

5And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep

6Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep

7Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold

8The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold

9Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes

10Saw the pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise

11In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;

12Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him

13Who met Fand walking among flaming dew

14By a grey shore where the wind never blew,

15And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;

16And him who drove the gods out of their liss,

17And till a hundred morns had flowered red

18Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;

19And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown

20And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown

21Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods:

22And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,

23And sought through lands and islands numberless years,

24Until he found, with laughter and with tears,

25A woman of so shining loveliness

26That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,

27A little stolen tress. I, too, await

28The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.

29When shall the stars be blown about the sky,

30Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?

31Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,

32Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

Publication Start Year

1899

Publication Notes

, 1899

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire, assisted by Ana Berdinskikh

RPO Edition

2009

Rhyme