I THOUGHT no more was needed
Youth to polong
Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.

O 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?

O who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?

I have not lost desire
But the heart that I had;
I thought would burn my body
Laid on the death-bed,

For who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?



– A Song by William Butler Yeats



Related posts:

  1. Poem of the day – Love Song by William Butler Yeats My love, we will go, we will go, I and you,And away in the woods we will scatter the dew;And the salmon behold, and the ousel too,My love, we will hear, I and you, we will hear,The calling afar of the doe and the deer.And the bird in the branches will cry for us clear,And [...]...
  2. Poem of the day – A Man Young And Old: XI. From Oedipus At Colonus by William Butler Yeats Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain. Even from that delight memory treasures so,Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow,As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know. In the long [...]...
  3. Poem of the day – The Wild Swans At Coole by William Butler Yeats THE trees are in their autumn beauty,The woodland paths are dry,Under the October twilight the waterMirrors a still sky;Upon the brimming water among the stonesAre nine-and-fifty Swans.The nineteenth autumn has come upon meSince I first made my count;I saw, before I had well finished,All suddenly mountAnd scatter wheeling in great broken ringsUpon their clamorous wings.I [...]...
  4. Poem of the day – What Then? by William Butler Yeats HIS chosen comrades thought at schoolHe must grow a famous man;He thought the same and lived by rule,All his twenties crammed with toil;‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘What then?’ Everything he wrote was read,After certain years he wonSufficient money for his need,Friends that have been friends indeed;‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘ What then?’ All [...]...
  5. Poem of the day – The Meditation Of The Old Fisherman by William Butler Yeats YOU waves, though you dance by my feet like children at play,Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and you dart;In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves were more gay,When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.The herring are not in the tides as they [...]...