When You Are Old
WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, / And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
The Winding Stair And Other Poems
❦
IN MEMORY OF EVA GORE-BOOTH AND CON MARKIEWICZ
THE light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
But a raving autumn shears
Blossom from the summer's wreath;
The older is condemned to death,
Pardoned, drags out lonely years
Conspiring among the ignorant.
I know not what the younger dreams --
Some vague Utopia -- and she seems,
When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
An image of such politics.
Many a time I think to seek
One or the other out and speak
Of that old Georgian mansion, mix
pictures of the mind, recall
That table and the talk of youth,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
Dear shadows, now you know it all,
All the folly of a fight
With a common wrong or right.
The innocent and the beautiful.
Have no enemy but time;
Arise and bid me strike a match
And strike another till time catch;
Should the conflagration climb,
Run till all the sages know.
We the great gazebo built,
They convicted us of guilt;
Bid me strike a match and blow.
More poems by William Butler Yeats
The Fish
ALTHOUGH you hide in the ebb and flow / Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The Folly Of Being Comforted
ONE that is ever kind said yesterday: / 'Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey,
The White Birds
I WOULD that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! / We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;