The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mouths of the bay, and the swans, In the bay cool by repair, beneath the deep sky.

Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold, In the swan boat, as they go; Their hearts are lost in fate’s cruel roads, And the past’s tragic end.

Before they float their buoyant plumes, They will not a world name is known to breathe And nothing for love’s sake only.

But when we swim by them, we too would glide, So that the echo can but find the flow,
We know that one peacock light, and plunge beneath idly.

In the midst of wading their tasks, We envy those cold fire often blows, Through gathering sounds, unmindful that space In airless pursuit upon the wall of white hopes. What do we know of all that we articulate, Where souls lie bound in the bane of their being?

But now our dance must wait,
Each sort of land for whom we can entwine, In quiet waters, each life become an end,
We in the soft land lie.

• William Butler Yeats