He Thinks Of His Past Greatness When A Part Of The Constellations Of Heaven

By William Butler Yeats

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young

And weep because I know all things now:

I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung

The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough

Among my leaves in times out of mind:

I became a rush that horses tread:

I became a man, a hater of the wind,

Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head

May not lie on the break nor his lips on the hair

Of the woman that he loves, until he dies.

O beast of the wilderness, bird of the air,

Must I endure your amorous cries?