#1933 #IrishWriters #TheWindingStairAndOtherPoems
When you are old and grey and full… And nodding by the fire, take down… And slowly read, and dream of the… Your eyes had once, and of their s… How many loved your moments of gla…
Many ingenious lovely things are g… That seemed sheer miracle to the m… protected from the circle of the m… That pitches common things about.… Amid the ornamental bronze and sto…
Pardon, old fathers, if you still… Somewhere in ear-shot for the stor… Old Dublin merchant “free of the… Or trading out of Galway into Spa… Old country scholar, Robert Emmet…
A MAN I praise that once in Tar… Said to the woman on his knees, ‘… My hundredth year is at an end.… That something is about to happen,… That the adventure of old age begi…
Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water rats;
WHY should not old men be mad? Some have known a likely lad That had a sound fly-fisher’s wris… Turn to a drunken journalist; A girl that knew all Dante once
The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day For half his flock were in their b… Or under green sods lay. Once, while he nodded in a chair
WHAT if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There’s better exercise In the sunlight and wind. I never bade you go
Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing.
THE GYRES! the gyres! Old Roc… Things thought too long can be no… For beauty dies of beauty, worth o… And ancient lineaments are blotted… Irrational streams of blood are st…
SAID lady once to lover, ‘None can rely upon A love that lacks its proper food; And if your love were gone How could you sing those songs of…
BECAUSE there is safety in deri… I talked about an apparition, I took no trouble to convince, Or seem plausible to a man of sens… Distrustful of thar popular eye
ONCE, when midnight smote the ai… Eunuchs ran through Hell and met On every crowded street to stare Upon great Juan riding by: Even like these to rail and sweat
Were you but lying cold and dead, And lights were paling out of the… You would come hither, and bend yo… And I would lay my head on your b… And you would murmur tender words,
Dry timber under that rich foliage… At wine-dark midnight in the sacre… Too old for a man’s love I stood… Imagining men. Imagining that I… A greater with a lesser pang assua…