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Yeats, W B - Selected poems - Ego Dominus Tuus
Identifier
014704
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
W B Yeats – from Selected Poetry
from Ego Dominus Tuus
Hic. Why should you leave the lamp
Burning alone beside an open book
And trace these characters upon the sands?
A style is found by sedentary toil
And by the imitation of great masters
Ille. Because I seek an image not a book
Those men that in their writings are most wise
Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.
I call to the mysterious one who yet
Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream
And look most like me, being indeed my double
And prove of all imaginable things
The most unlike, being my anti-self
And, standing by these characters, disclose
All that I seek; and whisper it as though
He were afraid the birds, who cry aloud
Their momentary cries before it is dawn
Would carry it away to blasphemous men