Thursday, June 16, 2022

Love Poems -William Butler Yeats - 162 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

The Secret Rose: Love Poems -William Butler Yeats

The Secret Rose (1897) is a collection of poems by W.B. Yeats. The collection exhibits Yeats' devotion to mythology and occult much more than romance and is a display of symbolism. "To the Secret Rose" opens the collection. The poem, inspired by Yeats' membership in the Rosicrucian Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.


The themes of the poem are religion, myth and Irish history.


'Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,

Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir

The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold

Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes

Saw the pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise '




The "Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose '' is a portrayal of utopian longing. This was inspired by Yeats' own romance with a lady Maud Gonne, which was unfulfilled. He waits for an ideal life and future with her.


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