The Ragged Wood
O hurry where by water among the trees The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh, When they have but looked upon their images - Would none had ever loved but you and I! Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky, When the sun looked out of his golden hood? - O that none ever loved but you and I! O hurty to the ragged wood, for there I will drive all those lovers out and cry - O my share of the world, O yellow hair! No one has ever loved but you and I.
The Ragged Wood - context Summary
Published in 1899
Written for The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), the poem frames a speaker’s yearning in rustic, fairy-like scenes. Pastoral images of water, stag, and a “queen-woman” sky create a dreamworld in which the speaker laments love’s exclusivity and expresses possessive longing. The language mixes lyric tenderness and frustrated desire; the repeated wish that only the speaker and beloved had ever loved reflects Yeats’s unrequited feelings for Maud Gonne.
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