Never give all the Heart
Never give all the Heart
Original Text
Yeats, William Butler. W. B. Yeats: Selected Poetry: 38. Ed. by A. Norman Jeffares. London: Macmillan, 1968.
1Never give all the heart, for love
2Will hardly seem worth thinking of
3To passionate women if it seem
4Certain, and they never dream
5That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
6For everything that's lovely is
7But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
8O never give the heart outright,
9For they, for all smooth lips can say,
10Have given their hearts up to the play.
11And who could play it well enough
12If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
13He that made this knows all the cost,
14For he gave all his heart and lost.
Publication Start Year
1904
Publication Notes
In the Seven Woods, 1904.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire, assisted by Ana Berdinskikh
RPO Edition
2009
Rhyme
Form