To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing

Now that the docks are empty of the work of men And the easy fates spot interchanged, What can I answer now since fate has run, And heaven’s glow appears, so cold and black?

What can I more than speak your name? Some light is called for, light of all the yellow day. Sit not too long where woes and sorrows feign, That drifting fire is gone; we must be grey.

Oh, the gilded roads below the sky Will breathe awhile with chatter and be done. What can I answer now since Fate has run? Speak only of the past that feeds your flame! Was in her path of florescent bloom, What bright future shall we then have won? More vexed for the not spoken? And the west consume! Aloud in sky! Like rain it present darkness comes, Light living here is brighter than the sun!

• William Butler Yeats