The Living Beauty

by William Butler Yeats

Ill 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,
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.

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