All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
  
The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

About the headline (FAQ)

Confirmed with W. B. Yeats, Later Poems, Macmillan and Co., London, 1926, page 6.

First published in National Observer, November 1892 as "The rose in my heart"; revised 1899 and 1906

Authorship:

• by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), title 1: "Aedh tells of the Rose in his Heart", title 2: "The lover tells of the Rose in his Heart", appears in The Wind among the reeds [author's text checked 2 times against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Nicholas Marshall (b. 1942), "The Lover tells of the Rose in his Heart" [ high voice, treble recorder, violoncello, and harpsichord ], from The falling of the leaves [sung text not yet checked]
• by John Raynor (1909 - 1970), "The lover tells of a rose" [ baritone and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

• FRE French (Français) (Pierre Mathé) , copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2009-01-17
Line count: 8
Word count: 106