Overcome -- O bitter sweetness, Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl -- The rich man and his affairs, The fat flocks and the fields' fatness, Mariners, rough harvesters; Overcome Gods upon Parnassus; Overcome the Empyrean; hurl Heaven and Earth out of their places, That in the Same calamity Brother and brother, friend and friend, Family and family, City and city may contend, By that great glory driven wild. Pray I will and sing I must, And yet I weep -- Oedipus' child Descends into the loveless dust.
Return to the William Butler Yeats Home Page, or . . . Read the next poem; Girls Song