On foot. on horseback or in battle-cars.'

Thereon he shook the more and cast him down
Upon the web-heaped floor, and cried his word:
'With him is one sweet-throated like a bird.'

'You dare me to my face,' and thereupon
She smote with raddled fist, and where her son
Herded the cattle came with stumbling feet,
And cried with angry voice, 'It is not meet
To ide life away, a common herd.'

'I have long waited, mother, for that word:
But wherefore now?'
'There is a man to die;
You have the heaviest arm under the sky.'

'Whether under its daylight or its stars
My father stands amid his battle-cars.'

'But you have grown to be the taller man.'

'Yet somewhere under starlight or the sun
My father stands.'
'Aged, worn out with wars
On foot. on horseback or in battle-cars.'







William Butler Yeats

:0 gyud one