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 false love 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.


          The Sorrow of Love (1892)


          The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves
          The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
          And all that famous harmony of leaves,
          Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

          A girl arose that had red mournful lips
          And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
          Doomed like Odysseus and the laboring ships
          And proud as Priam murdered with his peers,

          Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
          A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
          And all that lamentation leaves,
          Could but compose man's image and his cry.

          - William Butler Yeats