| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| The Rose of the World |
| | | William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) |
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| WHO dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? | |
| For these red lips with all their mournful pride, | |
| Mournful that no new wonder may betide, | |
| Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, | |
| And Usna’s children died. | 5 |
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| We and the laboring world are passing by:— | |
| Amid men’s souls that day by day gives place, | |
| More fleeting than the sea’s foam-fickle face, | |
| Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, | |
| Lives on this lonely face. | 10 |
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| Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode: | |
| Before ye were or any hearts to beat, | |
| Weary and kind one stood beside His seat; | |
| He made the world, to be a grassy road | |
| Before her wandering feet. | 15 |
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