“For Anne Gregory” The great Irish poet's ode to the perilous attraction of a young woman's hair.

Irish poet W.B. Yeats

‘Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.’

 

‘But I can get a hair-dye
And set such colour there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair.’

 

‘I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.’

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), one of the 20th century’s seminal literary figures, was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of "his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." Yeats was born in Dublin and educated in London and in Dublin, but spent summers in the west of Ireland at his family’s house at Connaught. He founded the Irish Theatre, together with Lady Gregory, which was to become the Abbey Theatre.

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