Poem by William Butler Yeats

Two Songs from a Play

I

I saw a staring virgin stand
Where holy Dionysus died,
And tear the heart out of his side,
And lay the heart upon her hand
And bear that beating heart away;
And then did all the Muses sing
Of Magnus Annus at the spring,
As though God’s death were but a play.

Another Troy must rise and set,
Another lineage feed the crow,
Another Argo’s painted prow
Drive to a flashier bauble yet.
The Roman Empire stood appalled:
It dropped the reins of peace and war
When that fierce virgin and her Star
Out of the fabulous darkness called.

II

In pity for man’s darkening thought
He walked that room and issued thence
In Galilean turbulence;
The Babylonian Starlight brought
A fabulous, formless darkness in;
Odour of blood when Christ was slain
Made Plato’s tolerance in vain
And vain the Doric discipline.

1. When Helen Lived
2. To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing
3. The Three Beggars
4. To a Wealthy Man Who Promised a Second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery if It Were Proved the People Wanted Pictures
5. The Attack on 'The Playboy of the Western World', 1907

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