The Wild Swans at Coole. William Butler Yeats

      I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content —

      Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,

      The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent —

      From beauty that is cast out of a mould

      In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,

      Appears, and when we have gone is gone again,

      Being more indifferent to our solitude

      Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old,

      The living beauty is for younger men,

      We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

      I thought no more was needed

      Youth to prolong

      Than dumb-bell and foil

      To keep the body young.

      Oh, who could have foretold

      That the heart grows old?

      Though I have many words,

      What woman's satisfied,

      I am no longer faint

      Because at her side?

      Oh, who could have foretold

      That the heart grows old?

      I have not lost desire

      But the heart that I had,

      I thought 'twould burn my body

      Laid on the death-bed.

      But who could have foretold

      That the heart grows old?

      Dear fellow-artist, why so free

      With every sort of company,

      With every Jack and Jill?

      Choose your companions from the best;

      Who draws a bucket with the rest

      Soon topples down the hill.

      You may, that mirror for a school,

      Be passionate, not bountiful

      As common beauties may,

      Who were not born to keep in trim

      With old Ezekiel's cherubim

      But those of Beaujolet.

      I know what wages beauty gives,

      How hard a life her servant lives,

      Yet praise the winters gone;

      There is not a fool can call me friend,

      And I may dine at journey's end

      With Landor and with Donne.

      My dear, my dear, I know

      More than another

      What makes your heart beat so;

      Not even your own mother

      Can know it as I know,

      Who broke my heart for her

      When the wild thought,

      That she denies

      And has forgot,

      Set all her blood astir

      And glittered in her eyes.

      Bald heads forgetful of their sins,

      Old, learned, respectable bald heads

      Edit and annotate the lines

      That young men, tossing on their beds,

      Rhymed out in love's despair

      To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

      They'll cough in the ink to the world's end;

      Wear out the carpet with their shoes

      Earning respect; have no strange friend;

      If they have sinned nobody knows.

      Lord, what would they say

      Should their Catullus walk that way?

      'Though logic choppers rule the town,

      And every man and maid and boy

      Has marked a distant object down,

      An aimless joy is a pure joy,'

      Or so did Tom O'Roughley say

      That saw the surges running by,

      'And wisdom is a butterfly

      And not a gloomy bird of prey.

      'If little planned is little sinned

      But little need the grave distress.

      What's dying but a second wind?

      How but in zigzag wantonness

      Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?'

      Or something of that sort he said,

      'And if my dearest friend were dead

      I'd dance a measure on his grave.'

      That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year

      I wished before it ceased.

      Nor bird nor beast

      Could make me wish for anything this day,

      Being old, but that the old alone might die,

      And that would be against God's Providence.

      Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?

      Never until this moment have we met

      Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap

      From stone to stone.

      I am looking for strayed sheep;

      Something has troubled me and in my trouble

      I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,

      For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble

      And make the daylight sweet once more; but when

      I had driven every rhyme into its place

      The sheep had gone from theirs.

      I know right well