When Helen Lived

When Helen Lived

Poem 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
From bitterest hours;
Yet we, had we walked within
Those topless towers
Where Helen walked with her boy,
Had given, but as the rest
Of the men and women of Troy,
A word and a jest.