All Things Can Tempt Me

by William Butler Yeats

　　

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All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman’s face, or worse, The seeming needs of my fool-driven land; Now nothing but comes readier to the hand Than this accustomed toil. When I was young, I had not given a penny for a song Did not the poet sing it with such airs That one believed he had a sword upstairs; Yet would be now, could I but have my wish, Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish.

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