A Song

I thought no more was needed

Youth to prolong

Than dumb-bell and foil

To keep the body young.

5

Oh, who could have foretold

That the heart grows old?

Though I have many words,

What woman’s satisfied,

I am no longer faint

10

Because at her side?

Oh, who could have foretold

That the heart grows old?

I have not lost desire

But the heart that I had,

15

I thought ’twould burn my body

Laid on the death-bed.

But who could have foretold

That the heart grows old?

—
William Butler Yeats

The Wild Swans at Coole, 1919