Time & Brevity
The New Faces
From The Tower (1928)
If you, that have grown old, were the first dead,
Neither catalpa tree nor scented lime
Should hear my living feet, nor would I tread
Where we wrought that shall break the teeth of time.
Let the new faces play what tricks they will
In the old rooms; night can outbalance day,
Our shadows rove the garden gravel still,
The living seem more shadowy than they.
Codex Note
To an old friend: if he were the first to die, the speaker would never tread the places where they worked. The living, he says, 'seem more shadowy' than the dead.
Cite this poem
MLA
Yeats, W. B. “The New Faces.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/yeats/72/.
Chicago
Yeats, W. B. “The New Faces.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/yeats/72/.
Read this poem with the Codex →