The Moods, by William Butler Yeats

The Moods

Time drops in decay,Like a candle burnt out,And the mountains and the woodsHave their day, have their day;What one in the routOf the fire-born moodsHas fallen away?About this poem:Literary scholar Richard Ellman writes in The Identity of Yeats that "Moods...are conspicuously, but not exclusively, emotional or temperamental; they differ from emotions in having form and, often, intellectual structure. Less fleeting than a mere wish, and less crystallized than a belief, a mood is suspended between fluidity and solidity. It can be tested only by the likelihood of its being experienced at all, and being so, by many people."

poems.one - William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats