The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner (by William Butler Yeats)

File:William Butler Yeat by George Charles Beresford.jpg
Yeats [by George Charles Beresford, 1911]

The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner
by William Butler Yeats
originally in The Rose (1893), text revised in 1925


Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree,
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.

Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny;
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.

There's not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory;
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.


* * * * *

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