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Yeats, W B - The Wanderings of Oisin - A dome made out of endless carven jags
Identifier
011802
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
W B Yeats – Collected Poems
From The Wanderings of Oisin
A dome made out of endless carven jags
Where shadowy face flowed into shadowy face
Looked down on me; and in the self same place
I waited hour by hour, and the high dome
Windowless, pillarless, multitudinous home
Of faces, waited; and the leisured gaze
Was loaded with the memory of days
Buried and mighty. When through the great door
The dawn came in, and glimmered on the floor
With a pale light, I journeyed round the hall
And found a door deep sunken in the wall
The least of doors; beyond on a dim plain
A little runnel made a bubbling strain
And on the runnel’s stony and bare edge
A dusky demon dry as a withered sedge
Swayed, crooning to himself an unknown tongue
In a sad revelry he sang and swung
Bacchant and mournful, passing to and fro
His hand along the runnel’s side, as though
The flowers still grew there; far on the sea’s waste
Shaking and waving, vapour vapour chased
While high frail cloudlets, fed with a green light
Like drifts of leaves, immovable and bright
Hung in the passionate dawn.