Transcriber's Note

MOSADA.

A Dramatic Poem.

BY

W. B. YEATS.

with a

Frontispiece Portrait of the Author

By J. B. YEATS.

Reprinted from the DUBLIN UNIVERSITY REVIEW.

DUBLIN:

PRINTED BY SEALY, BRYERS, AND WALKER,
94, 95 and 96 Middle Abbey Street.

1886.

MOSADA.

Scene I.

A Little Moorish Room in the Village of Azubia.
In the centre of the room a chafing dish.

Mosada. [alone] Three times the roses have grown less and less,
As slowly Autumn climbed the golden throne
Where sat old Summer fading into song,
And thrice the peaches flushed upon the walls,
And thrice the corn around the sickles flamed,
Since 'mong my people, tented on the hills,
He stood a messenger. In April's prime
(Swallows were flashing their white breasts above
Or perching on the tents, a-weary still
From waste seas cross'd, yet ever garrulous)
Along the velvet vale I saw him come:
In Autumn, when far down the mountain slopes
The heavy clusters of the grapes were full,
I saw him sigh and turn and pass away;
For I and all my people were accurst
Of his sad God; and down among the grass
Hiding my face, I cried long, bitterly.
Twas evening, and the cricket nation sang
Around my head and danced among the grass;
And all was dimness till a dying leaf
Slid circling down and softly touched my lips
With dew as though 'twere sealing them for death.
Yet somewhere in the footsore world we meet
We two before we die, for Azolar
The star-taught Moor said thus it was decreed
By those wan stars that sit in company
Above the Alpujarras on their thrones,
That when the stars of our nativity
Draw star to star, as on that eve he passed
Down the long valleys from my people's tents,
We meet—we two.

[She opens the