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Yeats, W B - Collected poems - Three old hermits took the air
Identifier
011816
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
W B Yeats – Collected Poems
Three old hermits took the air
By a cold and desolate sea
First was muttering a prayer
Second rummaging for a flea
On a windy stone, the third
Giddy with his hundredth year
Sang unnoticed like a bird
‘Though the door of death is near
And what waits behind the door
Three times in a single day
I, though upright on the shore
Fall asleep when I should pray’
So the first
But now the second
‘We’re but given what we have earned
When all thoughts and deeds are reckoned
So its plain to be discerned
That the shades of holy men
Who have failed, being weak of will
Pass the Door of Birth again’
While he’d rummaged rags and hair
Caught and cracked his flea, the third
Giddy with his hundredth year
Sang unnoticed like a bird