W.B. Yeats

Today is the 68th anniversary of the death of W.B. Yeats. (That was a horribly convoluted sentence. I apologize.) He is one of my favorite poets. I wrote a paper on him for one of my classes last semester and I really fell in love with his poetry all over again. He had a gift for language that few can equal.

It is very difficult to choose just one poem of his to post, but here goes:

When You are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


Wikipedia's W.B. Yeats page--be aware that one of the pictures on this page is highly inappropriate--it's at the bottom of the page, under the picture of his grave.