Mongan Thinks Of His Past Greatness

by William Butler Yeats

　　

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I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young And weep because I know all things now: I have been a hazel tree and they hung The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough Among my leaves in times out of mind: I became a rush that horses tread: I became a man, a hater of the wind, Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair Of the woman that he loves, until he dies; Although the rushes and the fowl of the air Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.

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