William Butler Yeats
In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz
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1 The light of evening, Lissadell,
2 Great windows open to the south,
3 Two girls in silk kimonos, both
4 Beautiful, one a gazelle.
5 But a raving autumn shears
6 Blossom from the summer's wreath;
7 The older is condemned to d**h,
8 Pardoned, drags out lonely years
9 Conspiring among the ignorant.
10 I know not what the younger dreams -
11 Some vague Utopia - and she seems,
12 When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
13 An image of such politics.
14 Many a time I think to seek
15 One or the other out and speak
16 Of that old Georgian mansion, mix
17 pictures of the mind, recall
18 That table and the talk of youth,
19 Two girls in silk kimonos, both
20 Beautiful, one a gazelle.
21 Dear shadows, now you know it all,
22 All the folly of a fight
23 With a common wrong or right.
24 The innocent and the beautiful.
25 Have no enemy but time;
26 Arise and bid me strike a match
27 And strike another till time catch;
28 Should the conflagration climb,
29 Run till all the sages know.
30 We the great gazebo built,
31 They convicted us of guilt;
32 Bid me strike a match and blow.