Time & Brevity
The Living Beauty
From The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
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,
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.
Codex Note
The old poet finds some contentment in beauty cast in bronze or marble, which is indifferent to his solitude, because 'the living beauty is for younger men'.
Cite this poem
MLA
Yeats, W. B. “The Living Beauty.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/yeats/46/.
Chicago
Yeats, W. B. “The Living Beauty.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/yeats/46/.
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