When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wrought with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth;
The roses that of old time were
Woven by ladies in their hair,
The dew-cold lilies ladies bore
Through many a sacred corridor
Where such grey clouds of incense rose
That only God’s eyes did not close:
For that pale breast and lingering hand
Come from a more dream-heavy land,
A more dream-heavy hour than this;
And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
I hear white Beauty sighing, too,
For hours when all must fade like dew.
But flame on flame, and deep on deep,
Throne over throne where in half sleep,
Their swords upon their iron knees,
Brood her high lonely mysteries.
For some reason, this poem reminded me of my first experience reading Lord of the Rings as a teenager. There is something hauntingly beautiful about it. It has the appeal of the city on the horizon partially shrouded in mist and of the fallen ruin that conjures former glory in our imaginations. The most beautiful things and most beautiful people we meet, somehow always feel like they are wrapped in mist, that they are an echo of greater things that were and, perhaps, a foretaste of better things to come.
He Remembers Forgotten Beauty by W.B. Yeats
