Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition

All Things can tempt me (Author: William Butler Yeats)

p.114

1. 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.