At Galway Races

by William Butler Yeats

    There where the course is,
    Delight makes all of the one mind,
    The riders upon the galloping horses,
    The crowd that closes in behind:
    We, too, had good attendance once,
    Hearers and hearteners of the work;
    Aye, horsemen for companions,
    Before the merchant and the clerk
    Breathed on the world with timid breath.
    Sing on: sometime, and at some new moon,
    We’ll learn that sleeping is not death,
    Hearing the whole earth change its tune,
    Its flesh being wild, and it again
    Crying aloud as the race course is,
    And we find hearteners among men
    That ride upon horses.