And Pluck ‘Til Time And Times Are Done

Happy Yeats Day! (This means you, @venetianblonde) Go out and dance like a wave in the sea. https://t.co/67wJF5OvGI

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) June 13, 2021

On June 3, 1933, the Irish poet W.B. Yeats wrote to Swedish politician Erik Kule Palmstierna, inviting him to Yeats’ birthday dinner at the Savile Club on June 13. The guests, he explained, “should be not less than the number of Graces and not more than the number of Muses. I shall hope for some number between the extremes. Black ties I imagine.”

The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water

W.B. Yeats

I heard the old, old men say,

“Everything alters,

And one by one we drop away.”

They had hands like claws, and their knees

Were twisted like the old thorn-trees

By the waters.

I heard the old, old men say,

“All that’s beautiful drifts away

Like the waters.”