Verse > W.B. Yeats > The Wild Swans at Coole
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W.B. Yeats (1865–1939).  The Wild Swans at Coole.  1919.

8. The Living Beauty


I’LL say and maybe dream I have drawn content— 
Seeing that time has frozen up the blood, 
The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent— 
From beauty that is cast out of a mould 
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,         5
Appears, and when we have gone is gone again, 
Being more indifferent to our solitude 
Than ’twere an apparition. O heart, we are old, 
The living beauty is for younger men, 
We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.  10


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