William Butler Yeats. When Helen Lived. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

When Helen Lived

By William Butler Yeats


WE have cried in our despair
That men desert,
For some trivial affair,
Or noisy, insolent sport,
Beauty that we have won	5
From bitterest hours;
Yet we, had we walked within
Those topless towers
Where Helen walked with her boy,
Had given, but as the rest	10
Of the men and women of Troy,
A word and a jest.