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
    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.