Page:In the Seven Woods, Yeats, 1903.djvu/21

 O wandering birds and rushy beds

You put such folly in our heads

With all this crying in the wind

No common love is to our mind,

And our poor Kate or Nan is less

Than any whose unhappiness

Awoke the harp strings long ago.

Yet they that know all things but know

That all life had to give us is

A child's laughter, a woman's kiss.

Who was it put so great a scorn

In the grey reeds that night and morn

Are trodden and broken by the herds,

And in the light bodies of birds

That north wind tumbles to and fro

And pinches among hail and snow?

That runner said 'I am from the south;

I run to Baile Honey-Mouth

To tell him how the girl Aillinn

Rode from the country of her kin

And old and young men rode with her:

For all that country had been astir

If anybody half as fair

Had chosen a husband anywhere

But where it could see her every day.

When they had ridden a little way 9