A Poet to His Beloved | I bring you with reverent hands

by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939)

A Poet to His Beloved

Language: English

Available translation(s): FRE

I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams;
White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
White woman with numberless dreams
I bring you my passionate rhyme.

First published in Senate, May 1896 as part of "O'Sullivan the Red to Mary Lavell", revised 1899

Confirmed with W. B. Yeats, Later Poems, Macmillan and Co., London, 1926, page 22.

Authorship:

by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), "A Poet to His Beloved", 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 Lowell Liebermann (b. 1961), "A poet to his beloved", op. 40 no. 1 (1993) [ tenor, flute, string quartet, and piano ], from A Poet to His Beloved, no. 1 [sung text checked 1 time]
by Paul Schwartz (b. 1907), "A Poet to His Beloved", 1945 [ high voice or medium voice and piano ], from A Poet to His Beloved [sung text not yet checked]

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

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2009-01-20
Line count: 8
Word count: 53