Excerpt from Mosada: A Dramatic Poem "And my Lord Cardinal hath had strange days in his youth." Extract from a Memoir of the Fifteenth Century. Mosada, ... A Moorish Lady. Ebremar, ... A Monk. Cola, ... A Lame Boy. Monks and Inquisitors. Scene I. A Little Moorish Room in the Village of Azubia. In the centre of the room a chafing dish. Mosada. [alone] Three times the roses have grown less and less, As slowly Autumn climbed the golden throne Where sat old Summer fading into song, And thrice the peaches ushed upon the walls, And thrice the corn around the sickles amed, Since 'mong my people, tented on the hills, He stood a messenger. In April's prime (Swallows were ashing their white breasts above Or perching on the tents, a-weary still From waste seas cross'd, yet ever garrulous) Along the velvet vale I saw him come: In Autumn, when far down the mountain slopes The heavy clusters of the grapes were full, I saw him sigh and turn and pass away; For I and all my people were accurst Of his sad God; and down among the grass Hiding my face, I cried long, bitterly. Twas evening, and the cricket nation sang Around my head and danced among the grass; And all was dimness till a dying leaf About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."
Author
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929). Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. —from Wikipedia
