“To a Sister of the Cross & the Rose”: An Unpublished Early Poem

Abstract

In August 1891 W. B. Yeats completed a poem of which fair copies would appear shortly in two of his most important gatherings of early poetic manuscripts. It has remained unpublished until now. Entitled on one of the two copies “To a Sister of the Cross & the Rose” and untitled on the other, the eight-line poem combined two tetrameter quatrains rhyming abbacddc into a single stanza:

To a Sister of the Cross & the Rose

No daughter of the Iron Times,

The Holy Future summons you;

Its voice is in the falling dew

In quiet star light, in these rhymes,

In this sad heart consuming slow — Cast all good common hopes away,

Mine eyes For I have seen the enchanted day

And heard the morning buggies [sic] blow.

August 1891¹