W.B. Yeats was born on this day. What’s your favorite Yeats poem? Here is mine. I especially like the first half. It gets a little pessimistic in the second half, but that’s Yeats, and well, sometimes that’s life too. But what I like is the image it forms so perfectly in my head. The carefree child, celebrating life. If only we could hold on to some of that as we age.
To a Child Dancing in the Wind, 1916
Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water’s roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool’s triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind!
