In the Seven Woods

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In the Seven Woods is a volume of poems by William Butler Yeats, published in 1904.

This is the first book of Yeats' "middle period," in which he eschewed his previous Romantic ideals and preference for pre-Raphaelite imagery, in favor of a more spare style and an anti-romantic poetic stance similar to that of Walter Savage Landor.

The poem Adam's Curse, however, continues to reflect the old ideals. This is also the most popular and frequently anthologized of the poems from this volume.

[edit] Contents

I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods

Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees

Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away

The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness

That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile

Tara uprooted, and new commonness

Upon the throne and crying about the streets

And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,

Because it is alone of all things happy.

I am contented, for I know that Quiet

Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart

Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,

Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs

A cloudy quiver over Pairc-na-lee.