! ! A Thought After Yeats

When youth was life and life was youth and life was love and love was life, I thought love came and went; its coming, overwhelming; and its going, death of spirit; then, as if the wild white swans had flown away and left the waters of the heart’s lake cold. But now I know it’s not like that: love that, guarded, never flies from here in heart to where it will, may grow dark, cold and miserly; ungiven every livelong day it turns to rags and dry old bones, confiscated in the heart. Better now, be with those wild white swans which on a dark cold icy winter’s day gather at the water’s edge to stretch for yesterday’s warm loaf still fresh; then turn, swim, lift strong wings and fly one knows not where, and may not ask; watch them then, into the distance; hear the flap of wings grow into silent air; pause still a little while; then turn, one’s living breath white in that winter air; then back to warmth of home and love and peat fire glowing in the hearth of heart renewed.