W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). Responsibilities and Other Poems. 1916.

18. The Realists

HOPE that you may understand!

What can books of men that wive

In a dragon-guarded land,

Paintings of the dolphin-drawn

Sea-nymphs in their pearly waggons

Do, but awake a hope to live

That had gone

With the dragons?