hind a busy brain--
A woman, with a child's laugh in her blood;
A maid, wearing the shadow of motherhood--
Wise with the quiet memory of old pain,
As the soft glamor of remembered rain
Hallows the gladness of a sunlit wood.

Brian Hooker [1880-

THE ROSE OF THE WORLD

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.

We and the laboring 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.

Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.

William Butler Yeats [1865-

DAWN OF WOMANHOOD

Thus will I have the woman of my dream.
Strong must she be and gentle, like a star
Her soul burn whitely; nor its arrowy beam

May any cloud of superstition mar:
True to the earth she is, patient and calm.
Her tranquil eyes shall penetrate afar

Through centuries, and her maternal arm
Enfold the generations yet unborn;
Nor she, by passing glamor nor alarm,

Will from the steadfast way of life be drawn.
Gray-eyed and fearless, I behold her gaze
Outward into the furnace of the dawn.

Sacred shall be the purport of her days,
Yet human; and the passion of the earth
Shall be for her adornment and her praise.

She is most often joyous, with a mirth
That rings true-tempered holy womanhood,
She cannot fear the agonies of birth,

Nor sit in pallid lethargy and brood
Upon the coming seasons of her pain:
By her the mystery is understood

Of harvest, and fulfilment in the grain.
Yea, she is wont to labor in the field,
Delights to heap, at sunset, on the wain

Festoons and coronals of the golden yield.
A triumph is the labor of her soul,
Sublime along eternity revealed.

Lo, everlastingly in her control,
Under the even measure of her breath,
Like crested waves the onward centuries roll.

Nor to far heaven her spirit wandereth,
Nor lifteth she her voice in barren prayer,
Nor trembleth at appearances of death.

She, godlike in her womanhood, will fare
Calm-visaged and heroic to the end.
The homestead is her most especial care;

She loves the sacred hearth: she will defend
Her gods fro