All Things can tempt Me
All Things can tempt Me
Original Text
Yeats, William Butler. W. B. Yeats: Selected Poetry: 47-48. Ed. by A. Norman Jeffares. London: Macmillan, 1968.
1All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
2One time it was a woman’s face, or worse—
3The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
4Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
5Than this accustomed toil. When I was young,
6I had not given a penny for a song
7Did not the poet sing it with such airs
8That one believed he had a sword upstairs;
9Yet would be now, could I but have my wish,
10Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish.
Publication Start Year
1910
Publication Notes
The Green Helmet and Other Poems, 1910.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire, assisted by Ana Berdinskikh
RPO Edition
2009
Rhyme
Form