Poem IndexFirst lines About

He Hears the Cry of the Sedge

W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) · The Wind Among the Reeds · The Wind Among the Reeds · 1899

I wander by the edge
Of this desolate lake
Where wind cries in the sedge:

Where this text comes from

First published in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/w-b-yeats_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (29)

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49608
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32491
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36865
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49609
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49615
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49609
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32233
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.92252
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001776372
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Dublin_University_Review/fE8wAQAAMAAJ
https://www.google.ie/books/edition/The_Dublin_University_Review/TWUEAAAAQAAJ
https://www.google.ie/books/edition/The_Dublin_University_Review/TFAwAQAAMAAJ
https://www.google.ie/books/edition/The_Irish_Monthly/EMoaAAAAYAAJ
https://archive.org/details/gop-1889
https://archive.org/details/poemsandballads00unkngoog
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000551354
https://archive.org/details/fairytalesirish00yeatrich
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008958226
https://archive.org/details/countesskathleen00yeat
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008883383
https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofw01yeat
https://archive.org/details/collectedworksin01yeat
https://archive.org/details/collectedworksin02yeatuoft
https://archive.org/details/collectedworksin00yeatuoft
https://archive.org/details/responsibilities00yeatiala
https://books.google.com/books?id=jDI3AAAAIAAJ
https://archive.org/details/robertes00wby/robertes00wby
https://archive.org/details/poemsyeatrich
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001020237

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L3.

Cite this poem

W. B. Yeats (1865–1939). “He Hears the Cry of the Sedge.” First published in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/w-b-yeats/he-hears-the-cry-of-the-sedge/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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