Upon A House Shaken By The Land Agitation

by William Butler Yeats

    How should the world be luckier if this house,
    Where passion and precision have been one
    Time out of mind, became too ruinous
    To breed the lidless eye that loves the sun?
    And the sweet laughing eagle thoughts that grow
    Where wings have memory of wings, and all
    That comes of the best knit to the best? Although
    Mean roof-trees were the sturdier for its fall,
    How should their luck run high enough to reach
    The gifts that govern men, and after these
    To gradual Time’s last gift, a written speech
    Wrought of high laughter, loveliness and ease?