The Wild Swans at Coole
W. B. Yeats, 1917
Yeats's poem on counting the swans on the lake at Coole Park in autumn, nineteen years after he first counted them.
The trees are in their autumn beauty,The woodland paths are dry,Under the October twilight the waterMirrors a still sky;Upon the brimming water among the stonesAre nine and fifty swans.
The nineteenth Autumn has come upon meSince I first made my count;I saw, before I had well finished,All suddenly mountAnd scatter wheeling in great broken ringsUpon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,And now my heart is sore.All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,The first time on this shore,The bell-beat of their wings above my head,Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,They paddle in the cold,Companionable streams or climb the air;Their hearts have not grown old;Passion or conquest, wander where they will,Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still waterMysterious, beautiful;Among what rushes will they build,By what lake’s edge or poolDelight men’s eyes, when I awake some dayTo find they have flown away?