A Man Young And Old: VII. The Friends Of His Youth

Laughter not time destroyed my voice

And put that crack in it,

And when the moon's pot-bellied

I get a laughing fit,

For that old Madge comes down the lane,

A stone upon her breast,

And a cloak wrapped about the stone,

And she can get no rest

With singing hush and hush-a-bye;

She that has been wild

And barren as a breaking wave

Thinks that the stone's a child.

And Peter that had great affairs

And was a pushing man

Shrieks, 'I am King of the Peacocks,'

And perches on a stone;

And then I laugh till tears run down

And the heart thumps at my side,

Remembering that her shriek was love

And that he shrieks from pride.

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats, (born June 13, 1865, Sandymount, Dublin, Ireland—died January 28, 1939, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France), Irish poet, dramatist, and prose writer, one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922. Yeats is one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the award of the Nobel Prize. Whereas he received the Prize chiefly for his dramatic works, his significance today rests on his lyric achievement. His poetry, especially the volumes The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in English. His recurrent themes are the contrast of art and life, masks, cyclical theories of life (the symbol of the winding stairs), and the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the hubbub of modern life.

More poems from same author

A Song From 'The Player Queen' A Drinking Song A Man Young And Old: III. The Mermaid A Man Young And Old: VII. The Friends Of His Youth A Man Young And Old: XI. From Oedipus At Colonus

A Man Young And Old: VII. The Friends Of His Youth

More poems from same author

Unlock the Power of Language & AI

Lughaat

Spell Checker

OCR