This is for Jane Dougherty’s A Month With Yeats Challenge, Day 12.

Today’s quotation is:

“He made the world to be a grassy road

Before her wandering feet.”

–W.B. Yeats

There was a maiden with flowers in her hair

glorious she was, but with a tragic air.

Yet would the gods so decree

that beauty be the cause of tragedy?

Rather humans create such fights

with jealousy, hate, and righteous might.

“I would give you all I can,”

said the young, determined, love-struck man.

“But I would also let you go

if ever that is how you wished it so.”

With that she took him, wed him, then,

and their love was renewed again and again.

For he made the world a delightful place

and within it there, they had such space–

for her, he created grassy roads with scented flowers

and there she could wander in day or evening hours

She often said she was glad she’d wed him then

and their love was renewed again and again.

Though beauty may pass like a dream,

the rose is deeper than it seems.

Its beauty lies in not only in its shape and form,

but also in its scent that lingers and adorns.

And if wars are fought to capture bloom or bower

that is not the fault of the radiant flower.

John William Waterhouse, “Windswept” or “Wildflowers,” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons