| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | The Rose of the World | | By William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) |
| | | WHO dream’d that beauty passes like a dream? | |
| For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, | |
| Mournful that no new wonder may betide, | |
| Troy pass’d away in one high funeral gleam, | |
| And Usna’s children died. | 5 |
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| We and the labouring world are passing by: | |
| Amid men’s souls, that waver and give place | |
| Like the pale waters in their wintry race | |
| 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 you were, or any hearts to beat, | |
| Weary and kind one linger’d by His seat; | |
| He made the world to be a grassy road | |
| Before her wandering feet. | 15 | | | |
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