A Memory of Youth

]> A Memory of Youth An electronic edition William Butler Yeats Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by Beatrix Färber Juliette Maffet School of History, University College, Cork First draft. 548 CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork

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2012 CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland. E910001-023

The works by W. B. Yeats are in the public domain. This electronic text is available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of private or academic research and teaching.

Bibliography A bibliography is available online at the official web site of the Nobel Prize. See: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1923/yeats-bibl.html The edition used in the digital edition William Butler Yeats A Memory of Youth William Butler Yeats Responsibilities and other Poems The Macmillan company New York 1916 68–69

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By William Butler Yeats (1865–1939). before 1916 The poem is in English. literary poetry W. B. Yeats 19c 20c 2012-02-10 Beatrix Färber ed. File proofed (2), additions to encoding made; header completed; file parsed; SGML and HTML files created. 2012-02-01 Juliette Maffet ed. Header created. 2012-01-23 Juliette Maffet ed. First proofing. 2012-01-18 Juliette Maffet file capture Text captured by scanning. A Memory of Youth The moments passed as at a play, I had the wisdom love brings forth; I had my share of mother wit And yet for all that I could say, And though I had her praise for it, A cloud blown from the cut-throat north Suddenly hid love's moon away. Believing every word I said I praised her body and her mind Till pride had made her eyes grow bright, And pleasure made her cheeks grow red, And vanity her footfall light, Yet we, for all that praise, could find Nothing but darkness overhead. We sat as silent as a stone, We knew, though she'd not said a word, That even the best of love must die, And had been savagely undone Were it not that love upon the cry Of a most ridiculous little bird Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.