Pour wine and dance if Manhood still have pride, Bring roses if the rose be yet in bloom; The cataract smokes upon the mountain side, Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb. Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet That there be no foot silent in the room Nor mouth from kissing, nor from wine unwet; Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb. In vain, in vain; the cataract still cries The everlasting taper lights the gloom; All wisdom shut into his onyx eyes Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb.
Return to the William Butler Yeats library , or . . . Read the next poem; The Municipal Gallery Revisited