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Home  »  The Wild Swans at Coole  »  16. The Dawn

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). The Wild Swans at Coole. 1919.

16. The Dawn

I WOULD be ignorant as the dawn

That has looked down

On that old queen measuring a town

With the pin of a brooch,

Or on the withered men that saw

From their pedantic Babylon

The careless planets in their courses,

The stars fade out where the moon comes,

And took their tablets and did sums;

I would be ignorant as the dawn

That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach

Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;

I would be—for no knowledge is worth a straw—

Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.